Corpse Party: Broken Bones: Bloody Bonds
by Starry's Light
Summary: Eleven souls: seven human, four vivosaur. Sent into the blackened, ammonia-smelling nexus stirring old memories and new concoctions of both fear and disturbance that they were not supposed to experience. It was irrational, the monstrosity they had been accosted into. But an old set of people practically living in the purgatory needed their help if they ever wanted to escape...
1. I: He was Selfish

**Heheh... It's currently a dark Friday night, precisely nine thirty-seven PM, as I settle down and begin to write of the tale about to unfold in front of my very own writer eyes... :3 The perfect setting to start a story on horror and spiritual biz! It's got the tone of a corpse party tale, but some fossil fighters characters show up in it. Why? Heheheh... you'll have to read and find out, young mortal. X3**

 **Dino: Stop talking weird.**

 **Me: Ignore him.  
So! My name is Starry's Light, as I am referred to on this lovely website, and this is a story woven from decades of darkness, horror, blood, and...**

 **Dino: little girls. TERRIFYING LITTLE GIRLS.**

 **Me: Sorry, new readers. He is a completely irrelevant character and I don't even know what he's doing here.**

 **Dino: Wah.**

 **Me: Moving on... Well, he's probably going to interrupt s'more, so I'll just end it off here. Get ready for what I trust shall be quite the interesting story... heheh. Enjoy~**

Corpse Party: Broken Bones: Bloody Bonds I

Chapter One: He was Selfish

The tiny silhouette trounced upon its usual grounds, the floorboards creaking and the bloodstains smelling, quite as they always did. Long, whiplike locks of nightmare black hair curled down her back to the small of her spine, and other rather long, gnarled bangs tore over her face and left parts of it seemingly blocked by the black lines of pure hair. Oddly, given her circumstances, they were presently neat locks of hair, albeit somewhat oily or mussed. Still, given her unexpected age, one would find she'd matured quite well. In fact... she hadn't aged physically at all, for a long time. And the days only stretched longer, shadows ablaze under a trying sun that continued to squeeze and pull the silhouettes like these goddamned people were pulling her own mind. She didn't look all that much, with her slate-gray skin, dry and plain, and her dark, shiny eyes and her tattered, scarlet dress, but she happened to hold the fate of the world. Some world, in the least.

Raising a doll-like hand and compressing it onto her forehead, a flash echoed throughout the old, smelly chamber and she appeared older than she looked at first glance, even through her childish facade. Whether the girl happened to be more or not, she looked tired, like she hadn't achieved quite as much rest as she rightfully deserved in a long, harrowing time, and it compressed at her as well, just as her hand did at the moment, looking as if it might reach out and tear into her own skin, peel it open, and let hot-red spilling of blood inch down her face. It wouldn't have hurt all that much.

But this was no time to dawdle.

Unimportant and meaningless as she looked, stress tried at her worse than those people out in the real world with their businesses to run and monsters to fight, whatever kind of creature they may be. It pulled through her body, squeezed at her heart, sent her in a relentless tizzy, and otherwise didn't seem to let go. And she knew why. Oh she damn well knew why. For a seven year old, she was well versed in the art of the darkness smattering all about her, her soul, her body, her dress, her eyes, her mind, and with a shriek, her hands flung up high above her head and she cried, "Stop it!" Of course, being the small girl she was, the voice didn't carry and it sat in the dead air encircling her miniature, doll-like self. She angrily crumpled into a ball and tore at the floorboards in front of her, whispering words that couldn't click or make sense, that didn't dig in and desire meaning. They fell flat and left to rot.

Ghosts toiled about her in further-out rooms, mostly minding their own hopeless wailing, screeching, and tattered sobs, proving their ethereal, eternal agonies. She honestly didn't even remember the mass majority's names or how they'd died. One would think she'd have those locked in her skull forever, but she could hardly focus because of another cause that was messing with the world.

They just couldn't stop living—now could they?  
They just couldn't stop losing—now could they?  
They just couldn't stop loving—how could they?

Stubborn teenagers and the girl and the teacher. How unbearably familial they'd grown and how much they relied on one another, only to die _over_ and _over_ and _over_ again... still not enough to completely kill their sorry selves off, because somebody _aaaalllways_ had to live. And then the torture ensued, and honestly, it sickened the little girl. Why wouldn't the just _die or something_ already? She'd let them be the first group of people to live through her hell if they'd just leave her alone. But their souls were trapped until something happened. And it was stupid, but a small plan, hugged closely to her black heart, coldly tapped her and sucked her in, and it sounded like it may work. It'd do something, at least.

About time she had some new blood enter.

* * *

It had been a long, harrowing night that would not seem to end. Ceaseless, a mind only it controlled: the dimly-lit hotel room in the chilly atmosphere of an altogether snug home. She never did quite manage to slide into slumber any longer, always just hanging on the edge after that first nightmare triggering the need to awaken; but her body most certainly desired sleep. It only seemed the dreams stretched out longer, now, taking the orange-haired girl down paths and hallways she had never seen before in her entire life. The eerie, homeless corridors had strange, sickly-red walls on display, and the crumple of her pale, pale toes on creaking, wooden floors or a strange, matted, dirtied ground sent chills racing down her spine. No one else to turn to, no one else she had the courage to ask for, auburn eyes continued to trace over the white-haired boy with his arms draped about her, his head pressed gently against hers, showing presence without assertive power. Dina felt safe in the warmth of the boy, and she had never felt safe like so prior. Her spindly, brown nightdress only worn from the much more assertive authority of another friend—Dina had rags for clothes and this was what happened after someone she knew figured it out—pressed thin against the warm, red coat cloaking her shoulders that Rupert had fetched for her rather... kindly, thoughtfully.

How he managed to notice these sorts of little things flourished her incredulity, but she could only profusely thank him and apologize, to which his soft, yellow orbs would lie upon her auburn and his face would draw close to hers, and they could feel their breaths upon one another, and he would tell her the promise he had given to her one time ago: _you are always forgiven._ Given by the patient, everlasting numbers of what he gave to her, Dina felt contemptuously spoiled by the rich, prince-like boy. It did tinge her cheeks with color and nearly spun her stutter to key, but she did not know what to say, only that... Rupert must have cared an awful lot for her. He treated no one else with this gentleness that she had ever seen before, and even as the night wore on and it became evident just how well he fared having to be brutally woken every night by her nightmares. And yet he continued, and yet he wore a snug, thankful look every time he came near to her. His fingers interlaced over hers, and a sudden rush of warm gratitude surged within the tiny Dina. She smiled unto herself, she smiled unto him, and he leaned closely into her and lifted one of their joined hands, his own fingers to lightly stroke her cheek. This happened often, the mutual need for one another, and though he never caught a full night of sleep any longer, he appreciated those times to spend alone with his sweet Dina.

Both felt a strong, mutual assurance, even as the shrunken, squirmy figures of two creatures the girl recognized particularly well came up and nigh spat upon the boy. The fiery quadrupled, with the red fan arcing across his back and cold, lemony orbs in full-glare, snorted flame and smoke. _I don't know what to say other than damn,_ Torn politely acquitted into conversation.

 _My gosh, Dina, if you weren't such a pushover maybe this poor soul would have some manners,_ brusquely stated the stout, blue-scaled and also shrunken tricera to the side of Torn. Dimetro and tricera happened to be game, and close as well, so neither actually used their petty insults as firewood for a flare of a fight any longer. They simply made tacky remarks, and the other felt need to assist their friend in such wording. Also, the prior had an issue with Dina and her feelings for Rupert—he probably always would, honestly—and he took any moment he caught as a chance to say some rude thing or another.

Torn opened his sharp-toothed maw to retort another silly factor when instead a rough sound split past his voice: _crrrrrrruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhnnnnnK._ As if the soft carpeting beneath the bed had begun to peel off alone, like the cusp of fruit and skin tearing away from one another, splitting to reveal the juicy, fleshy interior. Dina, slower to react but submissive with such noises, immediately stood on end and flinched, Rupert hugging her closely to his richly-dressed figure, even in rest his red-striped, white-set pajamas posh and obvious to their princely owner. His cool, yellow orbs glittered carefully upon the small face of the girl he held so dearly, and she closed her eyes, managing to stuff down a whimper successfully. She worked up the courage to open an orb when a shattering _SPLORT_ cut their bedroom in two and the cry she had been holding back burst out without another moment wasted, fingernails drawing into her palms and pulsating blood into the fleshy midst of her hands. Rupert gently pried open their flinched, shaking confines and, scooping her up as to keep her safe, lifted himself off of the bed and turned his glittering orbs to the ground below.

It had begun to peel open, sure to the suspicions Dina had so feared. Sighting this, she mumbled a few incoherent words and shook tighter. She tried to pull herself together which never worked, and eyes deciding to stay shut from now on, she squirmed somewhat and, pale toes wriggling, hugged herself against Rupert, who silently debated which step would be the least of the lethal to take and try to counter such movements. _Dammit, just let me grow to size or something and I'll—_

 _Torn, no!_ a third voice chimed in, this the fluttering call of a green, birdlike female. _You'll just break them further. Here..let me see if—_

None of the four ever heard the bird finish her sentence. An earsplitting hunk of wood screeched in place, yanking off from the safety it provided and shattering into both boy and girl who stared up in slow realization of the moment. Rupert, who did pertain to faster reflexes, might have moved, but the sheer incredulity of the moment and the fear breathing from her lips knocked him off-guard and he lost any momentum he should have mustered on his own. Torn and Trikko, shrunken dimetro and tricera, seemed to screw the fact that they would have been safer staying their own size and struggled to blimp up to their regular vivosaur heights, quickly stirring further torment and causing a symphony of floorboards to lift up and cry out. The virtually unending roll of ammonia lifted and burst into the breath of each of the four in question and, had their flawed selves had any hope prior, the scent took their minds away and any hopes of them escaping whatever lay before was knocked out cold rather quickly.

The inhumane whining, grinding, crying noises of churning wood met open air and the humans and vivosaurs respectively lost themselves slipping into cracks of wood and splinters, the last catch of them the long locks of orange hair from the girl. Not a soul screamed—none of them were well-known to burst out in guttural horror—but the frozen looks on their faces were not the most inviting. Dina, eyes twisting and curving as she took in her sudden loss of surroundings, took a mental blow to her mind and her head snapped back, consciousness rendered unable to connect. She lost herself to the rush of blood in her ears and the echoing swoop of their bodies... falling. No idle wonders struck her fancy—she simply was lost with the light into the sudden rush of black.

Little did she know that she was not the only one to be experiencing the same unfortunate fall. Other humans and vivosaurs alike in the world of Vivaldi-Isles happened to be losing themselves from dreamland to a very real nightmare soon enough. How real was a question that as her own old nightmares come from years rippling down her life all the way to her first moments encrusted with her child self writhing in amnesia, no such luck on escaping: as those set into motion and the horrible, overpowering redness struck her dizzy, she could recognize _things._ Things that had clawed down her neck and crushed her skull open in a pulp of messy red, tore her skin into strips and adorned them like streamers onto walls and cut off her fingers and toes and accessorized them as keychains and necklaces and the like. Dina herself felt her soul accosted into her throat as she began to uncontrollably quiver and just on her own, the inky darkness of unconsciousness not even reacting and scaring her: she crumpled into a ball and shook to herself. She did not like this. She did not like this at all. And it had hardly even begun, she felt sure enough of that.

Slowly, gently tossing her waves of silvery-orange hair back through pools of shaking, white fingers, hard and cold like ice, the voice in her head instructed her to move instead of lying on the ground. Black punctured objects swam in her vision, until they set into motion and the earth became a bleached, dark brown with shattering ricochets of holes splintering up and down what seemed to be a long, semi-lit hallway. The curdling stench of metallic—old, so very old—blood pushed up her nose until she could taste it down in her throat: Dina recoiled into nothing and fell flat on her back, squeaking profusely even through her attempts to stop it up. The only layers keeping her beige-clothed self from completely swamping in whatever lie behind her had been the coat wrapped around her shoulders, and seeing the red sleeves with the dusky blue cuffs sparked a hope in her. As if her traumatic events had not happened, Dina pushed herself into a sitting position and, pulling her hair back, gently fastened the collar of the coat round her neck and slid her arms into the warm sleeves.

He tended to let her wear it as was, what with how easily frightened Dina would become, and how easily concerned Rupert would draw in response. She had never met someone who cared as much about her—none she could remember—and it felt nice to think of him, the white-haired boy with his locks of silvery and white hair down to his chin, possibly further, with bangs lied atop his forehead. He never quite smiled, but his yellow orbs would soften a great deal, and any otherwise he made her feel safe. She suddenly wished she could see his figure in this strange corridor with her. Tossing her head around frantically, Dina saw that she recognized nobody, not her beloved vivosaurs that had apparently and carelessly fallen through as well—she had a few others, but the ones she knew came cascading in were Torn and Trikko. And the chain earthquake, so... strange, what if it had knocked off more than the lonesome room on the cold, snowy island and somehow: what if her other friends faced danger just as likely? The thought kicked her and Dina cried softly, instinctively: "Rupert? O-oh, Rupert... wh-where... a-...are... y-y-y...you..." She had no doubt it would be highly unlikely if not impossible that a soul caught her wording, and Dina heftily stood to her bare feet, the wood creaking unceremoniously beneath her, sending an ominous message out through her.

But it had to be old, splintered wood, bare with missing patches and an interesting shade of shifty brown. Parts of it curled and seemed as if in the need for a hug, but Dina stared down at those floorboards and quaked slightly in place. She knew she had to... she had to find Rupert, somehow. He had—he had fallen in, too, r-right? Did he? He did not... he did not... leave—her—here?—alone? Though she did not blame him if he had found an entrance and left her. Dina was simply like that, to assume all others would cast her aside. It... it deemed to be how she worked, and carving past all of her emotions for the boy, did he truly find and exit and leave her here—who was she to judge?

"Would it... b-b-be... nice, then... d-did I... did I... f-find... him..?" she asked herself softly. Nobody responded, but the air around her grew chillier, waiting for her next move as if to come out and abduct her or—or worse yet, with the tang of blood thoroughly coating the breath she gave off and everything around her—worse yet, something sat in the shadows just out of sight, waiting for the perfect moment to swoop down and strike her. Having repeated nightmares about these sorts of things in general and being an embarrassingly clumsy person meant the odds fell over and stopped stacking in her favor. Dina nervously lifted her hands and linked them together, staring at her united, frigid fingertips and wishing them to find safety somewhere.

Of course, safety did not come; she had had a vain hope it may have shown. Though it did not, and that was okay. She expected it to stay locked up inside of her, only able to come after she could find her dear Rupert, or perhaps one of her vivosaurs. She had seen each of them fall through that split of the earth too vividly, and the groans and shrieks of the wood still bounced in her head and sent Dina nigh to tears again. Obvious as it was: Dina had been scared out of her mind, and she could not both stop thinking toward the ordeal or simply stop her shivering self in general. She wanted to sit on the ground and cry the color out of her auburn orbs; having no clue what else to do, perhaps it would feel safer.

Then the hallway in front of her lit with a blue glow. A squeak emitted out of her mouth but it was not enough to set her moving and the glow was faster than she could have ever imagined as it burned a hole straight through her chest and—and it went straight through her chest. A fire lit up inside her heart, but, tentatively reaching out a finger and poking the soft, beige material shimmering with vibrant color: no holes, as if nothing happened and only the fiery touch was to remain. Then suddenly the spiraling blue light glided through her again and came to a stop, hovering the area from her chest to her neck and taking up an awful lot of her focus. "You!" it cried out in rapid succession, cutting through Dina further and making her shudder, cringe back, and bumble into the wall on her left that lie so near. "YOU!" She shook harder and tears began to spout from the corner of her eyes. Sighting this, the blue thing spoke softer: "you..."

Feeling stupid and terrified out of her wits, the girl mumbled, "M-m-me..?" and pointed a flurry of a finger at her chest. The ghost nodded in accordance and swooped back some, seeing it must have just sent a shock wave of fear rippling inside of her, blackening her insides with petrified shaking.

"Ah, I'm sorry! Please forgive me!" spoke the blue orb ideal, shifting in position. It reminded her of a time when she had seen the soul of another person—a long story a time ago that did not matter at the moment. But the soul vaguely looked similar to the blue ball, and the longer she looked, the more the apparition became to look like a boy much taller than her with slicked-back blue curls and a swanky grin on his sharp-toothed face. He dressed in some odd, pressed suit-like clothing that had what appeared to be his name pinned on it. Why did he..? "I didn't think you'd be so easy to scare! Well of course you are you're in this sort of school— _but!_ But but but! That's not important right now! See, there was this boy passed out on the ground"—he had her at the word "boy"—"and he, and he like was all sprawled out but he kept calling out this name, and it sounded a lot like a girl's name and you look really lost and—it doesn't matter if you don't even know who he is! This is the kind of place where you want to be with people all the time!"

Dina wanted to beg to differ, being the shy human as she was but—but boy. A boy, lying flat on the ground, calling out a female-sounding name. Of course, female-sounding names could be differing than from what this male thought it might be, with his loud, blaring, though slightly-chipper tone—mostly loud and blaring that caught attention between shaking eyes—but... a chance. "So anyways, I might as well tell you my name," the blue creature told her as he strode down the hall, waiting as she got the message and continued walking on. Her heart had landed in her throat and she could hardly dare to breathe. "I'm Takahiro Shozoka, and, as you can plainly, tell, I'm a ghost. Yeah. I'm dead." He just blew her mind straight open; Dina would have fallen did the ghost not continue his pace suddenly and force her to catch along. "The boy kept calling out this cute little name, I remember—blah, anyways! You probably figured this out by now, but you're in a school." She idly wondered what the word "school" meant and felt shamefully stupid. "It's called Heavenly Host Elementary School, if I'm right. And I am. I've been dead here for years, man." She was liking the sound of this place less and less as the moments passed by. "Aaaanyways, I've no idea how you got sent here, I thought people stopped coming at some point because... I dunno. I dunno. But victims stopped... Well... something like that, at least..." He seemed just as befuddled as she, and he had apparently been living here as a trapped, dead soul for years on end.

Fear crawled up and struggled to take full control of her as her hands began feverishly scraping at her eyes to try and stop the flowing tears that cooled her cheeks and left her nauseous and pathetic-feeling. Dina... she wanted Rupert; she needed to find him. A coherent thought slid through, though; she would rather he did not end up in this school than that he had been trapped here, too. Perhaps she did not see him or Torn or Trikko anywhere because she had gone into the bad place and they had... fallen into somewhere... h-happier? That became her first hope as she lumbered and shuddered down the hallway, eyes on anything but everything around her and mind wired on the name that she found herself groping for. She could only hope the boy they had found—that it was not Rupert, and Rupert was not here, and he was safe somewhere. She could live with the notion if he happened to be alright and she had simply become trapped here to die.

Still, a cold thought poked her. Rupert... how would he feel about her being stuck here, all alone? He would... He would not like that very much... would he..? He might... become upset by it, was Dina in a place like this that smelled of blood and other bodily liquids she did not search for or, by all means, want to sniff out and identify: the only true sniffing she did was to prevent the streak of snot running with her tear-stained cheeks. Her shoulders sagged and she nearly pitched over again, this time the single thing stopping her the fact that the next thing in front of her was an open door that instead her head banged into.

An intricate surface, the same, crushed brown as the walls and the ceiling, with a parchment white slitting through the front-top part of the door like it be where a window should go, only it was not. Did these—these schools, all, have windows like such? Perhaps they did. She did now know. One thing about Dina was how little she knew, especially when it came to her memories. But at the time, this was not quite as important as she took off running her bare feet over the sifting, crumpled wood and took for the person lying at what she assumed would be the front, with strange, small, cubical desks that appeared to be for children. Why would children need desks? She knew of people who had them and used them to write upon or some of the sort but—what would a child do with a desk? Perhaps the schools needed them. At the time being Dina stopped thinking of desks and began to wonder why she had sunk when she realized her foot had stubbed through a hole and she was about to glide down it. Letting out another high-pitched squeak, the tears running faster no matter how hard she rubbed at her face, Dina plastered her hands to the sides of the hole and hoped above all hopes she would not fall through.

If it be any hope, one of her feet had bent at an awkward angle, the left leg, which did not sidle up into the hole but let out a spurting, inhumane _CRACCCK_ that let her know the feeling in her leg, which had ebbed and thus sprung back as ripping shock and pain, bloody, ripping, tearing, smearing pain, was not good at all. She struggled with her arms clawed out at the floor, keeping her from truly falling, but she... she was stuck. And just in front of her, eyes widening with sickening disgust and fear—adrenaline pumping to fear and her squirming only growing with apprehensive fear—she saw a body with red on it, and judging by the stench it gave off, it could have just died or been killed a long time ago. Still, it... it was—it was red. Was it—no... it could not have been. Her head swam; she hoped wherever Rupert was, he was okay.

Something apparently heard her, and footsteps slowly clomped, clomped, clomped closer to her struggling figure with the reddening cheeks and tearful gaze. Dina squirmed and wriggled and struggled: in dashed hopes. There was no way she could pop out of this thing on her own. And the terrifying clomp of those boots—why, it... it could be anyone. What if it was the person that had killed—killed the boy ghost? Killed that corpse that was red and could have been anyone it was so coated—could have been... _him._ Dina did not know what to say as killers simply killed they did not not listen did they when hands crossed hers and she pulled back and began to cry out loud, utter fear pulverizing her entire being. "D-Dina..!" She only heard her name, not the voice inside of it. Squeaking and sobbing, she only wanted to pull back; she was afraid, she was so, so terribly afraid, and she quaked and revealed as much as the person squeezed onto her hands as if testing which one was the plumper, which to cut off and perhaps eat first, she did not know. She wept and feared and mumbled the only name she could catch onto, and the person whispered something.

"Dina, it is me."

Slow realization dawned upon her, and a reluctant, auburn orb peeped open. Only—she did recognize the face, and her tears grew stronger and her quaking harder, her body succumbing to what she saw in front of her and her gaze blurring weakly. She stopped struggling and puled out his name: "Rupert... Ruuuupert..." A hiccup embossed inside of her scratchy, curdled throat, and a hand removed from one of hers and gently stroked her head. Leaving her to cry out her fears for a moment, Rupert waited for her to regain at least a handful of senses, though truly she seemed to have been drained of practically all reason, and thus he waited a little longer than that as well, until the tears began to dry up and Dina seemed to recall she was stuck in a collapsed bit of floorboard, too tight to wriggle out of but somehow easy enough for a foot to accidentally slide into and crush her inside. He took careful, gentle maneuvers—whether others realized it or not, Rupert had a soft touch to everything, not just Dina but everything, though this was only easy to sight when he was with Dina—and eventually lifted his dear girl out of her hole and welcomed her into an embrace.

He spoke to her softly, kindly. "I... woke... as I heard something fall and crash into what sounded like wood. I knew none of what it could be, but I had to check, sitting on those wooden floorboards did me no good and I... I was mystified, thoroughly unable to believe that I... it was you. You happened to be trapped here with me, and I had... found you..." Her head curled and rested beside his, and he gently stroked his dear, shaking girl. "I did, at first, hope you would not be put through this same, strange place, but I find relief that you are here as it is, and... I can be by your side once more..." Not knowing what else to say, and having both a stutter and a dwindling sob to keep her steady, Dina simply nodded. She hardly knew how the boy could talk so gently and fuel such nice words from it, and she had stopped questioning it at some point. She was simply overwhelmed with joy of that she had him here, too, and did not have to go without Rupert. The last thing she wanted was for him to be in such a hazardous area, but admittedly, she felt relief Rupert would be with her, and as her head raised, the tears finally out of her system, she softly pressed her lips against his cheek and felt a security rising up inside of her. Though the creaky school—whatever a school could be—was it perchance a horror house?—rose amongst them, she had Rupert, and she felt safe.

"Dina..."

They stayed clutching at one another for moments longer, extremely reluctant to move even though they sort of had to figure out how to get out of this place: there was a corpse sitting to their side, and that did set Dina on edge and cross concern over Rupert, for both her and the well-being of this place, when the blue spirit descended down upon them. "Oh, so I guess you do know each other!" Takahiro cried merrily. "Well that's fine and dandy!" Though it could have been in a mocking tone, he seemed genuinely happy for the two living humans, that they still stood a chance in the world, even as the slicked-back-bluenette had evidently lost such chance of his own.

Quickly, recalling he did not know of this boy, Dina explained her own scenario to him in as little words as she could spare. "I woke up in a further... h-hallway... and... saw-s-saw this gh-host ev-entu-tually... T-ta-ka...hiro... and he... l-led me to-to you... sa-aying you were p-passed out and... and... c-call-linng my... name..."

"Yeah, baaasically," he stated somewhat tacitly in response, though the glint in his eyes proved anything but deadly. "So... I dunno. It's been awhile since stuff has happened around here. Do you guys happen to know what Heavenly Host Elementary School is?" A furious shake of heads. "Mm... how about a school? Do you know what a _school_ is?" Another smattering of shakes. He seemed unable to believe this at first, but continued on anyways. "Then... do you know... what charms are? And did you use one to get here?" More shaking.

Dina piped up with a gleeful, "The floor broke open in the middle of the night... a-and we fell th-through it... with m-m-my... t-two viv-vivosaurs." He seemed incredulous to what a vivosaur was. "U-um... they are v-very l-arge... c-creatures.. with scales. But th-th...they can shrink, t-too. And some.. b-breathe fire... and-and others shoot w-water..."

She left off there, feeling a little ill will. "Nope. Never heard of them. Hmm, wonder why. Weelllll, you fell through a hole, and that's how we all pretty much end up going here. We fall through the hole, pass out, and sometimes get lucky and have someone we did the charm with show up in the same space as us—but you know what sometimes that doesn't happen, and it's a very lonely thing to do when you end up dying because you're so lonely." Dina did not know of this charm he spoke of, but nevertheless felt the emotion locked up inside of this poor boy and felt the need to reach out and... she felt horrible for him. She simply felt beside herself with a perturbed, upset emotion clogging the drain that was connected to her entity.

"Hmm... I might as well try to explain a few things, seeing as we haven't had visitors in so long and I mean there's so many dead people everywhere but... it's nice to try to help others. Blaaah, moving past my sadistic life, let me set some ground rules: schools, first of all... are places where kids from age five to like eighteen go to learn stuff. From teachers." They evidently knew what both kids and teachers were, just not in this schooling fashion. "They teach them stuff like, y'know, math, and language arts and... history. Which have wars and stuff." Dina and Rupert each, though raised in completely differentiating climates, had both learned what they simply grew up learning without this institution of education required: words, basic numbers, fossil fighting: all they needed to truly understand was all they had to go through, and there was no school they learned that from. Parental beings, or guardians, or Torn, taught these all well enough. Simple topics. Simple.

"Oh, and Heavenly Host—it's an elementary school. Like little kids go to this one. And... well... some really bad stuff happened—like kids got kidnapped and murdered—and then this... nexus, in a sort, of different spaces that all make up this school, occurred from it. I'm sensing there to be... mm... There's—w-wow, so many people entering. I sense a lot of different presences in this school now, let me try to count them..." M-many..? Dina flinched back at that. Did it mean... who else would have been brought through this further-confusing pit, dragged through the earth so untimely and without accordance? Certainly, she felt certain, in some sort of these "spaces" the ghost spoke of, presently meaning their friends were technically not in this... area... Torn and Trikko had to be here somewhere, she felt certain. As well... who else could have been forced down here into this ensnarement? Who else could be here now, slowly draining of their sanity? Would... could it be others she knew? Could—could her foster brother—could Todd be here? The small, brown-haired, brown-eyed boy with the tan and the freckles and his love of dresses—could he—could he...

Sucking in frantic breaths, heart pattering inside of her at an unstable rate, Dina leaned against Rupert and attempted to catch her breath. He traced one arm around her back and hugged her gently, assured he was not moving. "Aha! So we've got you two, and... five more. Then there's four... weird entities I can't really explain. Probably those vivosaurs you mentioned earlier." Seven humans... four vivosaurs... Surely, these were people she could r-recognize, did they come up face-to-face by her side. Dina shuddered uncontrollably and shared a glance with the white-haired boy to her side, a quiet agreement broached betwixt them. Whatever went on, they... had to try and find a wave of sense through this sea of nonsense. Also, an escape plan sounded keen and something they should most certainly aim for finding. Perchance there was—an entrance, secret exit, trap door: something had to provide a way out. This "school" entity, being a location for temporary educational standings, would not be a permanent place for students to stay, though it seemed that this bloodied root of chambers, interlocked with multiple rooms, surely, just like this room, to teach the other children—when it had been alive, a living school and not so old, crusted, bloody: so the cracks in the ground were not natural. And the ghost was not natural. And the blood and the ammonia scent and the uneasy darkness: none of this had a natural sense to it. School did not serve the need to be... scary. Why would they try to frighten the poor children?

Takahiro had continued his ranting while her mind reeled, and Dina attempted to focus on his words once more, honing in on the speech so hard to miss with his loud, carrying tone. "...and saying that this school is built on such spaces, then it's highly unlikely you'll see any of the others that just entered the school with you." She had apparently lost focus at the worst moment, and meekly glimpsed at the dear boy beside her in hope he had paid the ghost male attention. The serious and presentable boy he was, the knowledge swirling in his star-like orbs, Rupert softly nodded to the girl that he could assist her later; the confusion crossing over her orbs must have been unbearably obvious. And yet, Takahiro took no notice of the sort. She found that more than somewhat refreshing and smiled beside herself. " So... you're basically here in this space on your own. But you guys look pretty content to who you ended up with. A lot of the time, the person you grabbed onto before your depart or the one you were hoping most to end up with... a lot of the time you'll be summoned here with them. But not always." The lonely male—glancing at him more closely assured that he happened to be slightly younger than Rupert and Dina, she being not even a year under Rupert, and this boy perhaps nearing the age of Todd—he looked so sad, although, without his friends. Without anyone, dead or alive, to accompany him. Unable to ever see them again, and trapped as a cold-blue ghost in this maze for eternity. She shuddered weakly at the thought.

"So... the charm. Most of the last group of people who came here were summoned by it. When I say group... I mean like... thousands of different people who saw this. The first horde was from the monsters in this nexus themselves just going out to the real world and killing, sending their souls here. Then somehow this charm leaked out on the Internet and people from all over found it and used it with their friends... and they never made it back out again. The only reason I know of it is because I'm here. Anyone who dies here... I heard their existence was forgotten or something ugly like that. I dunno." Neither knew of such in-tur-nit, but apparently it held the capacity of these charms. Both had a fair enough understanding of the word to make it by on it. "So... you'd do this charm, this Sachiko Ever-After thing, and you'd end up here... and you'd get killed by the end of it. Simple as that."

Turning his head away, he grumbled, "At least... you're _supposed_ to." His glassy, foggy eyes glinted with a hint of the malice they had never seen in this boy prior.

Dina had the curiosity to wonder what that could have meant, but the fear enough of speaking that she did not outright question it. Rupert did not show it, but she could feel a small length of unease coiling off of him. His emotions were not visible; she felt them, though, especially when sitting right beside him, their arms and shoulders shadowed over one another. Perhaps this meant she stood a chance of escaping..? Did... did Takahiro not want them to leave, so that he could be... he could be... without such a lonesome presence any longer, and tear through his loss of others? But Dina: they had to... go home. Unsafe fingerprints pressed against her on all edges, and she wanted to escape with Rupert and Torn and Trikko and whomever else may have fallen in here as soon as she possibly could. They did not belong in this strange place.

"Anyway, I have no idea why the heck you guys came here. Last I saw... apparently the charm had gotten enough people that it was starting to wipe out... across nations, or something insane like that. No one who goes through this nexus can really escape, so there's no way it'd stop, you know?" Takahiro grew terse and distant again, so the boy to her side quickly turned his head and whispered to her what the ghost had spoken of earlier.

"Apparently... we are in a nexus of this school. A cursed version of it created by some horrible creature that... honestly reminded me perhaps of rogue vivosaurs still without revival that... come back and haunt us. And there is one school, but there happens to be... multiple different versions of the single one. Different spaces. And... we are the only two living beings in this space, at this time. We are all that is here." His soft, gently-cold murmur filled her, and she nearly forgot to focus on the actual meaning within. Dina... really liked his voice, simply. Shaking herself, she stared up at the ghost boy again and the creaky walls, the bloodstained floor, the strange podium up at the front and the chalkboard behind it, each filled with strange markings the color of blood that she had to squint in order to read filthy lines of curses and hatred. It splashed a gelid refresher of where she and he were, and that they had to get out of here.

At the moment, the place did not seem too bad, now that she had Rupert. But then the corpse underneath the chalkboard, hastily shoved against the wooden podium, swam into her vision again, and her gag made a sudden reflex at her. Dina bit her lip and forced whatever could have been in there down, down, down. Her breath pulsated somewhere inside of her, and she could feel every single gasp she took from the atmosphere outside. The blood on the walls began closing in on her, and her mind throbbed, missing beats and giving an odd, splayed texture that splattered over her temples and threatened to drive her wild. She clasped for the hand of the boy next to her and squeezed it gently, and he squeezed back after a passing of moments.

Taking another glance at Takahiro and his slicked-back outlook, the nice suit, perhaps to be worn for this school he had gone to prior to dying, she did not know, his eyes seemed to cross and whatever tranquility Dina had prior slipped through her fingers. All that anchored her to the world and drifted in safety to the shoreline of her tangled mind was the boy who stood as she suddenly, dizzily did, and the ghost boy, not even glancing at them but at the window facing the outside of the school, this one providing a clean view of long streaks of rainwater and an endless row of dark trees, had such a stare in his eye. Almost a... bloody, lustful one that tugged at her heart the wrong way and nigh yanked it out of her chest. Dina collapsed almost as soon as she had risen, with her twisted, possibly broken, leg, the cracks jumbled in a clump of a few messy areas, and the prince-like boy to her side gently guided her away from that room. She took a glance at one of the signs at the front of it and read in old, scrawled handwriting, like that of gnarled bits of hair, **Classroom 1-A**. As long as she lived, she quickly decided that she never wanted to be in that classroom, this simple chamber for studying and learning, ever, ever again. If she ever saw a school once she left this terrifying realm she would step away and never look back.

This was... scary. This was... scary. Her breath clumped in ragged heaps and her leg pulsed with red streaks of blood that cut over her pale skin like red-and-white stripes, like the pajamas Rupert wore. He hugged her slightly-shorter, coat-cloaked figure to himself and guided her further from the classroom, gingerly stepping over holes in the dark, elaborate boots that he had on and keeping a watch over the shivering girl at all times. Of all things, he had had the ability to put on his boots prior to being struck into this strange nexus, this labyrinthine monster full of spaces and blood and holes to fall into and the staggering, rancid stenches blowing into them. Neither of them had even the slightest clue exactly where they were, and exactly what to do, but Dina took her small steps and she allowed Rupert to lead her, not objecting or criticizing or pulling back whenever he took the next step, his boot crafting a hollow echo in the strangely cold rooms.

This place seemed to press dark, tainted thoughts—dark, tainted breath—against the boy and the girl huddled in reliance upon one another, but neither spoke, neither voiced a word. Dina could feel the cold, unsafe, hazardous home of spirits and death choking down on her, and she idly wondered how old the atmosphere here could have been, and why it must have been so tainted to crumble down and try to consume her and the boy she felt so dearly upon.

Wherever they went, whichever path was crossed, as soon as a scrawl or writing could be found on the walls, or a voice echoed and bounded along, Rupert would read it out to her. It felt oddly dangerous to speak in this place, so he saved his voice only for reading aloud things he could keep his eyes centered upon and not let derail from. Testimonies and scripts from a multitude of other children, boys and girls, young and old, even a few adults, it seemed, held their own story to share, none of them ending all too happily ever after. One spoke boldly of a girl and her best friend who played a game to see which of them would eat the other, as they had run out of food and needed such to go on—sustenance upon one or the other. Having never even considered devouring any type of meat, Dina felt a cold chill sharpen on her back and chip at her. Others whispered about groups who would turn upon themselves and shriek and kill and—Dina shriveled up and held particularly closer to him at those. She could not imagine... that happening to her, or her friends that could be there, for that matter... or seeing Trikko and Torn tear apart, losing themselves and: she shuddered again, half expecting Rupert to tell her off upon that, upon her fear.

Of course he did no such thing, but this place teemed with lies and... and this cord of black a few letters and whispers called the Darkening. And that it took characters by the throat and pulverized them from the inside out until they could not even recognize their own selves and practically turned feral. As Rupert finished reading another one of such tales, Dina rapidly grabbed one of his hands that held her and mumbled a few scattered words. He calmly asked her to take in a breath and try again.

So she did, and, "I am n-never lett-i...ing... g-go of you... No matter what happens I want... I want you to know that... I trust you."

He was stunned at the quiet outburst. It was what to expect from his sweet Dina, who could never quite bring herself to harm another through word, and murmured back, "And I will do the same."

Some feral thing in the shadows hissed at their hushed promises.

Dina, shameful about her clumsy soul and how often she stumbled back and how much her leg ached, felt hot embarrassment creep into her eyes and stain her cheeks as time wended on and words seemed to repeat in her head, and she continued to stumble, as she always did. Rupert noticed many things, as he did this, as he did her repeated stumbles, and decided it was time they took a break. He gently led her down a staircase they had chanced upon and at the fall she had at the bottom, mindlessly scooped her up as he always did and carried her the rest of the journey to the room left unlocked on the one side, where he took no mind of what sat on the walls and laid her down on the first cot he reached, it somehow not covered in blood or dust but instead felt warm to the touch, even before Dina rested against it. He joined her on the small, springy bed, finding his own heart settling when he stayed to her side than without, and watched her as the orbs fluttered.

"Rupert..." she breathed, and his eyes turned to her. "Do you... wish to rest?"

He thought of it for a moment. Of the tiring walking, of the scaling up and down the stairs and the periodic carrying of the girl he so felt such strong liking to, of all he had done, and he considered the ghost boy they had met, and he quickly reached a decision. "No. I just want to sit here for a moment, perhaps consider what we have gone through." His eyes glittered toward the entrance, facing the far right of their room. "Infirmary," he then mused, "how... quaint."

A shifting, and the orange-haired girl with the silvery highlights settled sitting beside him, their legs dangling off the cot together. "Then I will sit and consider with you." She had a soft, melted-ice sort of tone that did not hold strong, but her voice sounded sure that she wanted to stay awake with him. "Perchance... I would sleep better in this environment but: no... I want to stay here with you. I... w-would like to, Rupert... as... as l-long as... you do-do not mind, of... of course." Her head bounced some at that.

"Of course not, Dina." He gently kissed her, and left them entwined for a moment, prior to pulling back and examining this strange, admittedly creepy room. Bloodied fingerprints lined the cabinets facing all walls, and an assortment of bottled chemicals set on the shelves, dusty and old, giving off faint, singeing scents. His hand held over hers, and he squeezed it lightly as he observed the strange collection of sharp-bladed scissors adorning the walls, all on their own racks. Dark, mud-like substances caked each one, but one could never be too sure. Dina snuggled against him, and he rested against her, and they did not speak for a time, only focused on the one beside them and nothing else to that matter. Neither could rest with what sat in their heads; neither tried to. And they enjoyed the quiet acquiesce, nevertheless.

It felt safer in the room than it did the creepy, creaking hallways. For all of its strange ornaments, the infirmary was the most-cared room he had seen in the school thus far. And it also had beds that sure, were not the softest, but he still felt an ease to sit on something that did happen to be of enough comfort and have Dina by his side.

Their voices never rose, both easygoing whisperers as was, and they spoke of what they had seen in their gentle tones. It was a comfort they both found incredible strength and safety to have.

"What did... did you think of all of those letters, Dina..?"

"They... s-scared me. I want to just... t-take everyone out of here... and... get them away..."

"I do not like it here."

"M-me neither."

Oddly, they each took this situation calmly. Given their background as fossil fighters, these sorts of things did not quite take over their minds, at least, just yet. They could hold their own in such situations. Or, at least, hold enough of it. And they had one another, a privilege they never caught prior. Either way, their own responses to fear were not as painstakingly frenzied as others they knew so well. "What do you suppose... those messages meant?"

"A lot of... p-eople, m-musth-have passed here... and th-they all... did not qu-quite make it... ou-out. And they fell... t-to loss..."

"I believe there were multiple reasons to their demises. Certainly one of them was... this darkness in its own."

"Yes..."

"Whatever beasts could lie in wait here, as well as... Children do charms like so, and they do them too early, before they meet others that they care about, at times. And when they do chance upon those people—perhaps it is never enough. They use the wrong souls and somehow end up here. It's... wrong. Completely, simply wrong."

It... it made some sense. That this school, an upturned mess of utter horror, easily capsized those without strong enough spirits, or strong enough others, with them. "I am thankful I woke up and found you here. It would be... very hard... to... to go on... o-otherwise."

Each took a moment to let those words sink in, and he nodded gently. "Yes..."

"What do you think... they meant about... about the... gh-ghost children..?" There had been an alarming number of newspaper articles and simple testimonies speaking of these certain three children over and over again, like a repeating plea for reason inside of the heads of the two still alive—a warning, possibly. And every once in awhile, one in every batch of such wordings, a shadow of a fourth child had hovered over those. As she rested there, Dina began to realize just how little she had to intake from what her dear boy had read out to her, only snippets of what must have been significant texts, like the faint imprint of memory upon the triplet ghost children. The cold fingerprints covered her skin again and suggested she had hit something with that question, hit something hard.

Though he understood enough and had ingested the words easily himself. "Judging by all that we had seen, they must be related to the school, of course..." He tried the words on his tongue and grimaced. "Heavenly Host... Elementary School." A silent agreement passed to never call it by the exact name again. Spooks trickled down the girl and stabbed her. "Somehow... saying they did die here, and that they are so commonly repeated, they must have to do with the entire foundation of this... strange place." His golden orbs buzzed with ideas, and as if asking for permission, he glanced to the girl leaning against him, who smiled readily back.

"It seems... to me, at least, that they are... deeply connected to this school. Certainly. And... whatever sort of cruel mistress must be at the top of this nexus... these children could be connected to it." Dina was drawn into listening to him quietly think and pull together his own thoughts of what could be going on. "I... I don't know what could have caused this mass of pain and crafted such an old, dark... excruciating building and left other people to suffer in it for... what seems to have been for decades in the most minimal time frame, but... I feel as if those three children, so... tortured... it is as if they would have... nowhere else to go, of a sort. And... the man that was found with them—the inhumanely large man that disappeared without a trace months later...

"This is all such a strange conflict to be torn and upturned upon." She did not know whether the boy meant to use those words or not—Mistress—Torn—names of vivosaurs they both grew fond of—but she smiled albeit. "It is all we can do but try to see through it. We each have... gone through times not unlike this place, and it festers wounds I doubt either of us would enjoy remembering. Dina... I want you to not have to be near this... I want you to be away from the darkness you have had to go through... and yet here it comes... and here it comes..." His already-gentle-and-soft whisper drew quieter. "And... how does one stop it?"

They sat and brooded over the thought for a long, simple moment. "How does one stop it?" She did not know, but her heartbeat lost a few paces and thumped rigid in her chest: he did want it to stop. She... she personally did not mind all the much... about it, about her well-being, and to see him and understand that he cared through that...

"It pains me to see you hurt like this... I honestly... I cannot take seeing you in such harmful situations, Dina..."

And it pained her to see him going through such motions... She recalled the father of Rupert, a strange man of violent greed... and it plucked at her coldly to be reminded of him. He was a darkness... but his darkness seemed to be a much stronger gray than the one she faced with her dear now. In the midst of the warming infirmary, Dina snuggled closer to the boy and closed her eyes bleakly, her fingers connecting to his arm and holding herself to him tightly. His other arm stretched over and a hand was placed over one of hers.

Cold breath shattered whatever warmth was proposed in the action, and Dina instinctively shuddered back. The door to the infirmary respired open and in came cold, pulsating nudges of the air, drawing the girl and her eyes to nuzzle open as a hand intersected with her side and she was pushed down, off the cot, and took a quick trip to the ground below. Any air remaining in her lungs crushed and the strength in her legs feebly melted. Rupert, golden orbs flicking over her, churned from the position of Dina weakly sprawled on the ground to the glowing-blue creature diving for the collection of scissors hanging on the wall, pointing for a particularly small size. Then grabbing a second, just-as-caked one as well. The rancid scent of her moving musty scissors forced the girl to gag, and Rupert watched over her gently, petrified in space as thoughts set to motion and Dina herself could not even stand _she had to stand and move Rupert and get them both away_ when the creature turned around in her small, flowery dress and each saw she was missing... why was she missing—her head? Where had her... her head gone off to?

Just the grazed look of that thing set Dina and her heart aflame. She was going to die. She was going to lose her life, right now, and she cringed as the child stepped with a _THUK_ off the tall cabinet reaching for the scissors aligned so nice and neat but at least Rupert could recover and do something. She sat there, frozen with slushy terror and cold, breathless pain, her leg bent and self sprawled out on the floor, landed on her rump but unable to move otherwise, frozen and sucking in breaths that refused to come, the room growing staggering and red with darkness and thumps: and it was okay, Rupert would live, he could see to another day, and therefore, knowing that in her head made Dina smile to herself.

 _Skiiishhhh—_

She had been pushed once more, more like a lurching shove, and Dina tumbled out the door to the strange infirmary just as the ghostly child hand made a stab with the scissors that did not come down on her. A pale face, in tempo with hers, caught her eyes and held onto them, when he glanced upon her and their lips melded together and then the warmth was gone and consciousness fell like a flower to the cold of winter as Dina lost all sight of anything.

On the other side of the door, another soul was not as lucky. The crumpling, silvery blade of the metal had injected into his arm and left a slithering gash open, tearing past his sleeves with superhuman strength and completely shooting chunks of thick, red conglomerate out of his leaking line of red and came again, and again, mashing in and in and into the skin, past the muscle and sinew and fluid until the white mark of bone showed, and then past that as well. Holes began to puncture a pattern through his arm, and Rupert merely stared with a mock curiosity. He knew fairly well he would not live, seeing this ghost child and how locked he had come...

It was completely irrational: his talk with Dina, his actions, her actions, the uncanny timing of the little headless girl with the scissors. All of it: completely irrational. And the younger fellow had commented that no such as another soul had ever creeped into this space, and it slowly drove him insane: this all did not connect whatsoever. And now he was being stabbed to death by a pair of child's scissors.

And he felt none of it. All that collected in his mind was that Dina would live. He had saved her from her own frozen shock and she would live, she would live, she would live. The stabs had finished poking messes through his arm and, after taking a long stare at his own face, dove for the other arm on his right side, instead gently holding it taut and slitting rows upon rows of gashed into it, collecting and collecting pools of unhealed scars and melding them all into a mix of bright, cherry red that glistened as it dripped, and the amount of blood, it was irrational as well.

As soon as the girl finished his next limb and turned to another, a shock of cold, wet grief plummeted into his soul, and a selfishness seeped inside of him. He... It was obvious... It was obvious why he had truly saved Dina. He had seen the stripe of glee alight her face when she realized she would be the one to die, himself spared, and the shock and confusion as he pushed her out. He did it not—not because of some kindness in his heart that stirred him to be noble, but for the fact that: he let it seep out: without this girl, he would lose himself. He absolutely could not stand a world where he lost his sweet Dina and lived out on his own. He refused. And so he would rather die than commit with such, and he did. And he felt nothing but how selfish he had been to not think of how much—how would Dina feel... without him?

A cold chill set in, and he took the rest of the stabbing with no resistance, feeling the jolt of his flesh every time the gelid, slithering blade set in and yanked out, and he could feel the floor rotting with his blood and the crumble of his body, and the release as he was to be killed and his soul set out. Perhaps... if this place had been a little more rational, perhaps they both could have lived.

All the blue-turned boy felt as he left his old body into a white light and called out the name of the one he held dearest to him was that he had left her behind, and it would hurt her more than anything else, ethereal, surreal, or true.

 **Me: ...Yeaah. Ow. Ow. That was quite a first chapter... no? All of you who don't really know these characters and grew interested, if you enjoyed that, heh, I'm excited to see what you'll think of in the upcoming chapters... heeheeeeeeeee...**

 **Dino: this is all so messed up**

 **Me: WHY are you still here**

 **Dino: because I dunno**

 **Me: -banishes him-  
So, anyways, this has been the first chapter! I trust you guys... uh... aren't near scissors right now... haaahh... -awkward chuckle-**


	2. She was Possessed

**Me: Yaaay, now we move on to the next chapter of my strange little horror story!**

 **Rupert: …**

 **Dina: …**

 **Me: What.**

 **Dina: -sniffle-**

 **Me: ...heh...**

Chapter Two: She was Possessed

Left on cold floorboards for an unknown but increasing length of time, Dina continued to sleep, unaware of the actions brooding in her presence, just in front of her very own eyes, if only she would open them and see. A thin layer of peace coalesced her: sleep. So far, she had been saved from whatever might await her on the inside of the red-dyed doors. Whether the blood had already been there or had just been painted on, fresh and revolting, was a matter she would have to find out for herself. For the time being, Dina was safe, and she had never rested so wonderfully as long as she could remember.

Spiraling off in her mind were dreams, dreams that took those strands and became entwined with one another to craft sweet dreams that she had never had before. A white-haired boy took presence in the dream, and so did sparks of gentle rainbows and joy and love, kindness to wrap amongst the world and adorn it with hearts and sparkles and other happy things of the sort. Like clouds. Puffy and white and bright, tinted with their own special scheme of colors. Dina never had nightmares that were... so happy; she never had anything besides nightmares as it was. This sudden, new insight made her warm and fuzzy, and as her eyes gently began to nestle and stir, slowly peeping open, the sight she found herself with did not quite match with what she had slept over.

She squeaked, stabbing fingers with handfuls of wood while she shot fro and slammed the back of her spine and head into a crooked wall rotting of some black, inhumane substance that must have stained; unable to turn around and check, she did not know for sure. Probably, though, by the feel and slick taint, almost as if little, childish hand prints, footprints, prints of skin in general, grubby with oils and other filth, had all been meshed against her. Probably, though... Dina shuddered on her own in the creepy, dark hallway as she began to wonder why she was so alone until she recalled that Rupert should be right to her right side, as he had just been some time ago... if she remembered correctly. A hand flecked to the one side and caught limp air. She must have been silly, Dina remarked to herself, and reached out to the other side. The atmosphere seemed to release a shower of soft, hidden giggles at her incompetence, because, of course, she had been sleeping further out until the sudden surge of remembrance took her: he must be further along the hallway, in her original position.

The pale girl crawled on her hands and knees back toward the position she recalled well enough of supporting her weight before the great awakening, certain bits of skin rubbing against the ground beginning to ache and wear and bleed, even, from the numerous incisions already drawn in from previous attempts. Her mind scrabbled for the sight of the piercing, yellow orbs, and each wary moment passing made way for the throbbing ache in her heart and the longing that crumped and evolved in size with each throb bursting in her chest and rattling inside of her. Tentatively, hoping beyond hopes, Dina called out his name. "...Rupert?" As she thought; no response. "R-Ruuuuuuuu...peerrrrrrt..?" Again; nothing. "Rupert..?" She tried once more with no valid ability to hear him back and she cried out:

"Rupert! Rupert! Ruuupeeeerrrrt!" Nothing; nothing; nothing; perhaps he had fallen asleep somewhere. Dina sucked in painful breaths that did not seem to want to enter her body and help her live as if the air wanted her to choke and die and she sucked in her needed life force albeit all and continued and continued and continued, hands raising and clutching her head and leaving sticky markings on each side of her face, dribbling red fluids down when she flinched and stopped and wiped away any red markings so it could not drip down and harm the coat held snug around her body. She did not have much control, but she would not let his coat be stained. Never. He wore this coat much of all of his time and she had begun to adore it as much as he did: and she would not allow it to befall such demise. Scooping her own self off of the ground, managing on shaking, bone-pale limbs, Dina puffed her cheeks and scrunched her eyes, not appearing any more violent than she could and certainly not thinking of such thoughts, but it got the bravery to run in her blood, and she was going to need that.

Those bunched up auburn eyes fell onto the single indention in the walls around her. She had glanced down holes and seen no such white hair or shining, yellow orbs to determine Rupert was within the clogged depths, and she saw no other way than for him to be in this simple door, sopping wet with what had to be tendrils of blood, and... a strange pulp as well, one that she felt insecure to investigate any further and, wincing, pulled back from. A single hand jolted by her side and slowly began to move, plucking against the door and gently sliding the oddly weightless wood aside. It felt like nothing in her hand, a substance that could easily be crushed away and bent altogether. Cold, wet, clammy fingers twitched on the knob and did not seem able to let go, if but for a moment. Trapped in parallel orbit with the knob and the flat, paper-like door drenched with sinews that should have made it harder to enter the infirmary, but seemed to make it steps easier until it felt as if Dina could have breathed on it and the opening would flutter away.

What lied waiting inside, however, was another story. The first thing her shivering self laid eyes upon was the strange, gloppy epicenter that held slightly suspended to the air, all stuck in a chewed, red mess, thin enough to be a human, with ties to seem to suggest it was. Long strings of webs detached from the epicenter—which, though off the actual center, splayed close to it, some few paces in front of the cots to the left and front of the room—and they strung to walls and collected with fresh, impeccably fresh hunks of skin and meat and cloth: fabric, even, hanging by the edges, sucked back into the red mess hanging it onto the walls as if it could be streamers. Dina felt sick. Her wandering eyes could not hold off, though, and observed other dominant strings from the first gloppy start that stuck fingers and other tiny parts of the body in the air, like ears and toes and... hair. And eyes, through what must have been precise cutting and sculpting to be so smooth.

If only she could pretend they were not so golden-colored. She stumbled on her footing and other memories stomped on her, a quiet reminder of what happened and that he had pushed her away, and she fell out—through—the doorway and he was still locked inside with that child girl the color of ice breath that had no head and pertained a pair of child-sized scissors in each hand. She must have had to stab and sculpt and scoop an awful lot to make such a creation. Dina must have... been asleep... for such a time. She would have fallen if not for the things her feet came in contact with and she darted back and from behind the door stared at the small, brown things quietly. It dawned on her: elaborate carvings and strong fabric, pointed ends, tall, nigh up to her knees. Boots. Boots with tiny prints of child-sized hands all over.

But they were his boots, and in the end, that was all that mattered. Eyes finally sealing shut, she took a blind grab, securing her right hand on both boots, and fled. Thoughts began to scythe inside of her and it all derailed down into one mess that reeked horridly, as the cold realization of what happened curdled down her veins and stifled her if not completely. If only she could hear the single voice calling out to her, but whatever superhuman force stopped her—them both—she could not hear the whisper that soon versed in a shouting that had never been used before, until it was accepted that she was deaf to his pleas. Eventually collapsing, unable to support herself any longer, no matter how short that trail had been in general, she fell, and sweat and stray chunks of blood and the staggering gag in her throat all overwhelmed her too much to move again. The boots pressed up against her pale cheeks, like chestnut-colored hands cupping her, hugging her close. Not that it meant anything. It never did.

Dina then fell and was blissfully left there; not a living soul came to disturb her from her rest. Not that one was left. She had been creased to loneliness now, and not even the single soul that did permeate the air came to visit her. She did not stir.

Somewhere far along the lines of the road beyond of thick, carved, brown wood, down the creaky floorboards, a presence woke. Its fingers pried on doors and checked windows, but it appeared to be trapped in the halls. No doors gave any hint of moving, and the windows especially appeared unable to open. Whatsoever. The doors, at least, gave the permeating sense that they should've moved, but they, well, didn't, obviously, and the soul was left stuck in the middle of milling about in hallways: endlessly. It read the name **Heavenly Host Elementary School** as well as other sad words and things on the walls—an intense concentration of such—so it ignored these and cautiously stepped past the ever-growing masses of pooling blood, like this specific area had some... massive spill of red paint—of course, schools sometimes did do over their messy halls, and this had to be one of those occasions. Had to. Why... would a school... be so red... otherwise?

The soul shook its fleshy—yes, alive, very alive, it mumbled—head, and sauntered on, petite shoes clicking with each step it took. Its shadow refracted with the stiff, uneven, and pocked walkway below, so stuffed with holes it looked to be a flogged corpse. The shadows, as their steps lengthened, appeared to mark on its skin without it realizing, like bruises, that only grew in mark. That specific thought brought other sad words and sad things to mind, so it was discarded. This character in particular seemed well at forgetting the sadder, more burdening notions. They in their own, though, appeared to be slipping by at times. Alone; afraid; missing. Most certainly missing. They avidly called out the names of fellow companions, but never quite heard them. Their Student ID, neatly tied in with a pocket, held a paper scrap. A very important one, at that. At least, to them, it would always be that way. Forever: for a very long time that never quite ended.

Eventually, the whispers of voices, perhaps spirits, they seemed, by the crisp quietness—how they guessed so keenly they did not question—emitted from a nearby door. The soul gently reached out and, pressing at its knob gently, found it would so easily tear open and let her meet up with someone else. Perhaps ghosts, at that, but someone was better than no one. This place was plain creepy, and they needed someone else to stick with. It didn't like the thought of taking this all on their own, and their shoulders quaked. But as they reached, a softer voice spoke to her, further along the hallway. As its head turned and the fingers left the door, the unnoticed, unmentioned bruises dancing along its tender skin began to quickly vanish, like the shadows they were, and the victim didn't even think twice.

Didn't even realize how close it had just stood to life and death. It had practically breathed onto the side of a killer's face, and yet it moved on, and it found a girl crashed beside the front door of the room it'd nearly entered until seeing this strange, crushed, orange-haired girl with the beautiful scarlet coat and the deathly pale skin and the boots mushed against her face and the sparkling, beige nightdress sticking out. She dressed in a way the soul had never seen before, and she splayed there, squeaking, sprawled, looking as if she'd seen a corpse in this terror school.

The soul could empathize with an emotional personality and sat down beside the girl, helping pull her up. Gentle, auburn orbs met a dark, warmer shade: of green. "A-ah..." was all the girl managed. A stutter punctured her soft voice with any other words that followed and tears crystallized on the edges of her little self's vision. The soul wanted to crush her in a hug, she looked so torn.

Thunder crunched outside of the school, and the girl crumpled in it. Even with her tiny, shaking self, she felt older than the soul trying to comfort her. The stranger girl held onto it as the seize of pelleting raindrops and petals of siege pained on, and until it dropped and sat floating in a breath of calm did the girl force out a massive array of apologies. "It's okay!" squeaked the other one, raising a hand, "please tell me..." It considered what to ask, what might scare the girl the least, then settled with, "What's your name?" She wanted to ask about the coat at first, but considering it, the girl hugging the boots so closely to her seemed unable to speak of something long and tedious like those walked-on memories.

Hesitant at first, she slipped her cute, tiny toes into the elaborately-built brown boots and snuggled deep into them, appearing as if it made her feel a little... safer. Then, "D-Dina." The other soul must have accidentally displayed her surprise at the name—she had never heard of such a word before—and the orange-haired one shook her head. "N-no... ll-l-lastn-n...name. J-just... Dina." So Dina was her first name, and not only that, but she had no last name.

The other one decided to tell her about herself as well, seeing the first didn't look so keen on continuing. "I'm..." The girl seemed used to first-names-first, if the last-name warning came later. Where she was from, it was... opposite. Strange. The soul deliberated to copy this and make it easier for her. "Hello! I'm Mayu Suzumoto, but you can just call me Mayu." She grinned cheerily, somewhat surprised her smile made the other one look all the closer to bursting into cheers. "I'm here to help you with your problems!" With a gallant cheer, she took Dina's hands and smiled a little softer. Dina seemed to like how quiet, though bright, Mayu was. She didn't know what must have snapped this poor girl so cruelly, but Mayu did want to help her. Perhaps they could both help each other, or at least make a difference with whatever was wrong with this saddened school.

Down winding roads and hallways, whispering in the midst of it, the hallways began to change to a new color: a new space. The floorboards in particular, instead of a densely brown sheen, adverted to contain a purple hue, highlighting the brown floors only slightly enough that the atmosphere seemed to lift as well. Within the furthermore calming midst, as the intense shed of blood in the first space made the second look everything up to the point of dry, the characters seemed less enabled to fall into turmoil just as quickly. The fateful irrationality, as one victim had called it, seemed to dim. Peace abided: putting it simply. It flew calmer in this chasm, and it seemed less likely that a room full of scissors would turn up with the rest of the locked doors.

Squeaking from a pair of girls nearly cut off the silence. One tumbled with nervous feet wearing pink slip-in shoes. In fact, her entire attire held the same color, perhaps not such a light shade, but such clothing shouted that her favorite color by far had to be a suitable pink. Any shade, really. Her frilly, magenta skirt; the cloud-pink tank top beneath a thick, long-sleeved though transparent pink clothing above; the short, pink tights cutting off only slightly from her skirt. Her hair was another semi-dark pink, her eyes a hard-set magenta. Her skin was all a fair, porcelain pink as well. And currently, her cheeks blared an embarrassed tone of the aforementioned color as well. Redundant, albeit tasteful of her.

Her hair matched well—in two separate hair bands swinging down on her back—with the girl she struggled to pull off the ground. "Wake up already! I don't even know your name, but you keep passing out everywhere and.. and it's really, really scary! Stop it stop it stop it! Why can't you work yourself together? Please, it's really really scary here and I can't take it all by myself! I don't even have my v-vivosaurs—a-and, and I can't find Dino either!" Apparently, the pink one was bossy as well. She had her ways, and oh, was she set in them. Seemed reluctant to stray from the other girl. "You _can't_ leave me here!" Diction as of such proved it.

Fortunate for her, the other female did stir, and stared at her through foggy orbs, though slowly, that began to clear as well. "...nn?" She sounded as if she had been asleep, though her stiff position suggested far from it. More like she hadn't been herself lately: _really_ hadn't been herself.

"A-ah! AH! You start sleepwalking all over the place, mumbling the creepiest things, and then you just wake up? What's the matter with you?! Make up your mind!" Her lurching cry would beckon anyone who happened to be in the same hallway, let alone space, to come near. She'd practically asked for the spirits surrounding them to wake up, and that wasn't the smartest move, given the girl beside her, who heated up at the sudden yelling sensation.

"What—what's the matter with _you?!_ Are you crazy? Are you trying to wake up all of the spirits in this damned place?! Hey—stop—st-stop shaking me!" The second girl yanked her arm back from the first and stumbled to her feet. Her dark-river blue eyes slowly wandered to and fro in the long, wooden chamber, suddenly curious to what her surroundings might reveal to be.

The first shivered in place, and quietly puled, "Do you know where we are..?"

And with that, the second began to realize that this one had been a horrid reactant of fear, a toll setting from the place she'd fallen into. Of course she's scared; someone had to have lost their sense to not be shivering in this hell. The air sifted and felt extraordinarily cold, then shifted and heat forced her to sweat: even the temperature couldn't decide. Nothing could decide. And when the sudden earthquake ruptured both females out from under their feet all over again, it couldn't even decide which places to patch up—how did earthquakes magically fix?—or which to wear away. In tone, at the end, any remaining cracks in the wood had been smoothed, and the purple-tinged ground nobody took a large notice to of such casually creaked with each footstep. The girl with the blue hair helped the cowering, pink soul up.

"What's your name?" she asked in a now-softer voice.

Magenta eyes pierced calming blue. "R-Rosie..." the pink one newly-named Rosie mumbled weakly. Her splinter of tone almost suggested she'd backed down from the offer, only to bob back up again. She needed somebody to trust here, after randomly waking in such a state at such a strange-looking mechanism, and her only true friend hadn't even shown up with her. He was like that, though, to be dumb and sleep in and take longer than everyone else. Rosie felt passionate about him ending up in the weird place, too, and so he was just taking longer. It kept her sane. Thinking about him.

The other girl, somewhat short and thin, under a thin, yellow long-sleeved shirt and, a name tag and yellow bow bunching up that each lied on her chest as her body did, told her back, "Well, Rosie, this is..." Her eyes shifted for the nearby scrap of paper hanging apprehensively on the wall. "This is Heavenly Host Elementary School." Her dark-river eyes snapped at the sight of that name and recognized it immediately. She couldn't even tell from what, exactly, caused the lurch, but she felt it in her heart. Deep, down inside of her. She even felt like she'd been in here before, and that wasn't the happiest feeling she'd ever had. Clutching the scrap of paper still in her hand, she placed it in the slip of the name tag on he chest and turned back to the shaking girl. "So I guess your friends are missing too," she idly mumbled.

"Mm..." A shake of the head. "I don't see what other options we have..." That other one, the pink girl, continued to shake in a silent frenzy. "We might as well look for clues together... I'd say..." She raised herself, dark blue skirt, not so puffy, more pleated, smoothing around her legs, and assisted Rosie again into motion, whose own frilly skirt puffed beside hers and made it look all the thicker. Trying to act further kindly to that poor, pink-haired girl, the bluenette beside her murmured, "My name is Ayumi. Shinozaki Ayumi." She found it strange, at first, that the other girl hadn't used her last name, so she used her first name as well. It just felt right or something. She began to ache for the friends that had to be missing somewhere in this school, and pressed on, pushing Rosie along.

"Ah..." She seemed to find the Shinozaki-Ayumi part a little strange, but went along with it. "So... does that make me Richmond Rosie? Why the heck do you guys have your last name go before your first like that? Is it normal for you or something?" Yes, Ayumi calmly decided, Rosie was one who said what she wanted to say; the first felt more inclined to speak as her emotions set her through, but she wanted to be calmer in times like these, try to be strong and assist poor Rosie. She trusted this place wouldn't mess with her... Already, the cloaking fog of numerous dead bodies seemed to choke her right up.

Rosie's question swirled in her head. Their feet patterned against the ground with each stamping step. "Uh... what? Do 'you guys' go by your first names, and then last? Doesn't that make you the weird one?" She silently grumbled to herself, not sure whether she should feel like the idiot, or Rosie should. It was perfectly normal to go by how she did; in fact, she should have emphasized the use of the last name. Only people with closeness to her were allowed to use her first name: that was how it worked.

Ayumi didn't realize just how squeaky that other girl's voice was until the moment. "What do you mean, weird? Of course not! Our given names go first, then last! Why the heck would you call someone by her last name?"

She also realized how much terser and calmer she must have sounded, with her taut-but-tranquil tone after. "Because that's how it's done, of course. It's a tradition where I'm from."

"Oh." That got the pink one silent; only a patchy time passed without her chatter. Then it returned in full flavor. "Yeah, but that's just weird for me, so I'm gonna call you Aaayuuuumi anyways, okay? Er, um, if that's alright..."

For some strange reason, Ayumi felt it would have been awkward if she had been called by her last name, like she hadn't had that labeled onto her as a name in a long time... like she'd been wandering around with a set number of people, and all of them happened to be incredibly meaningful to her. How peculiar. Maybe the waves of spirits in the air were getting to her. "Ookay," came the trailing reply. "You do that. I'll... just... call you Rosie." And that was that. The two girls with their similar hairstyles, each with two bobs of hair secured with two separate hairbands, slowly moved onward through the dark-scented halls with the creaky, purple-tinged ground below their feet. Their secured hairs didn't bobble all that much as they stepped, each one filled with a fresh, new downpour of trepidation, because most certainly, each new movement of each foot could cause a whole new set of traps to concur. They didn't have the ability to tell and could be ambushed almost immediately. Ayumi in particular, strolling at the worried pace of a crawl beside Rosie, had a special, cautious gait.

She didn't explain to the girl next to her all of the worries buzzing in her head. Faces attached with names surfaced, and she quietly counted the eight of them: Ms. Yui, their sensei, their teacher, from school; Sakutaro, also labeled Shige-nii, the resourceful glasses-donned boy; Mayu, his cheerful follower always clinging to him; Satoshi, brown-haired, cowardly, and cheery despite it; Naomi, loud and proud and in charge with a faint sweetness; Seiko, Naomi's fiery best friend with quite a tongue; Yuka, Satoshi's adorable little sister; and, of course... he. Yoshiki. Blonde-haired. Delinquent. She searched most for him and once they passed a blood-stained figure and Rosie screamed a howl sure to blot out the ghost's minds and any other influences in general and Ayumi fell back and nearly slipped into a hole and they both panicked and screeched male names, as this was a male corpse, that it could not be—she used the flavorful name of Dino over and over again on loop—until it was confirmed neither recognized him.

Still, Ayumi felt like she hadn't reacted that strongly. Like she'd been here before... An uneasy settling dusted upon her like the dirt smearing all over this tiny but deadly little elementary school, and it never wavered. She swore, she'd seen that classroom door in front of her, and debated, if it opened, she'd take more notice to the emotions locked in her head. It looked old and rickety and had one side, the wooden edge with the hinges, completely rusted over, but surely enough, it slid and revealed the area inside without a doubt. The bluenette shook her head, twin tails of ocean-colored hair loping over, and slowly creeped within its musty confines, motioning her more-or-less partner to follow. Poor Rosie: poor, poor Rosie. Shivering and quaking, her nose both bloody and crusted with snot, eyes wide and ready to watch anyone and anything commit spontaneous combustion right in front of her very own eyes. That... must have been her very first corpse.

Shaking her head, the class representative from school—Kisaragi Academy, the High School end of the building, if she did say so herself, feeling a mite bit prideful—tried to shake off her strictly-clinging doubts and procured a thin, tall, waxy build from her pocket, letting its feather-white surface ripple, if for a moment, in the semi-lit glow. She rummaged for the matchbox also there, as she always carried those candles and she always carried those matches, because horror, man, horror was her thing—and Rosie never had to know just how terrified, too, she was on the inside, and how much she was beginning to succumb to the fear broiling inside of her—when she caught eyes with a silvery-blue substance in reflection from the candle.

" _Dina?"_

"EEEEEEK!" A hoarse cry spluttered from her throat and she fell coughing, crumpling, onto splinters and ashes and other sticky, red goodies that seemed to especially accompany this room. Rosie, having absolutely no idea what had just happened, the innocent doll, scooped up the candle casually, muttered about how much she wished she had Volcanic or some other veevo-soar with her at the time being to light it up, fiddling with the matches like they were completely foreign and, quickly dropping her miraculously-lit match and squealing about how hot it was and that it'd practically nibbled her finger right off or something, she was lucky it hit the ground and magically didn't burn anything but itself. Still with kindling left—and apparently just enough fire—Rosie caught the glaring, glassy stare in Ayumi's eye and, thinking it was her own fault, used shaking hands to connect the small, brown stick with the red end now slightly burning and smelling of hot, flushed chemicals and sooty smoke with the wick at the top of the waxy candle and letting it burn. Once again mistaking the glare, she moved the candle over toward the strange, tiny, brown, multiple tables—was there a big table in here that'd been pregnant or something?—and stuck down the sticky thing with a melted _shhhhhhluck._

Later, she reminded herself to ask the weird Ayumi girl in the funky thin getup, that yellow shirt and the pleated, blue skirt, and the name tag: why would she wear a name tag? She needed to ask the girl about whether or not tables could get pregnant because that was an awful lot of tiny baby tables for one room. They stood there, uneven, on their four legs apiece, in uneven rows with uneven stacks and lots of cracked, wooden, uneven chairs mostly behind them, and it was like they put children to work at all of those baby tables. What did they do? Ayumi, why was this normal to you? Maybe she was profound about the corpse thingy not supposed to—dead bodies? Why did dead bodies sit around? They were supposed to be buried like vivosaur bones, those weird humans from Ayumi's time. Humans seemed to be almost the same thing as a vivaldi—which Rosie happened to be—except humans were weird. And vivaldi obviously weren't.

Staring around, turning to face the stranger, tall podium at the front with a long, thin, gray chalkboard—oh gosh what did these strange people do in these strange places called class-rooms—Rosie looked down and caught Ayumi's wispy, white eyes. She didn't really remember Ayumi having eyes like that except for: well, yeah, except for that one time... And... her lips were oddly shaking, and blue and... that looked really wrong.

The voice that poured out was soft and gentle and in pain. "Diiiinaa... Dii _iiiiiiiinaaaaaaaaa..._ Where... are you... my sweet, sweet... Dina..?" The name drew circles in Rosie's head, but she couldn't figure out why. Then she recalled where she'd seen those eyes; oh, Ayumi was sleepwalking again. She always talked weird when she sleepwalked and made creepy faces like she was possessed or something and now... now she sounded like something that was really making the pink girl's clock tick. Angrily, Rosie clucked her tongue and pulled at the sleeves riding up on her arms, stress wearing her face. "Dina... Where have you gone..?

"Where could you be... my dear... girl..? What have I... done to you..? What have they... done to you..? Please be safe... please be okay... please do not... cry... my dear girl... please, do not cry..." Ayumi continued to mope in that boy's voice and it ground Rosie's gears but for the life of her she couldn't think of it. "Diiiinaaaaa..?" A scraggly hand flickered and lurched forward. The other one trapped around Rosie's ankle.

Then she screamed.

Utter impulse convulsed upon her figure and crumpled her down until she was kicking and screaming frantically, madly, hair flickering and slapping her back with her feet trouncing, prancing, flouncing, pleading for mercy as she was tugged down and her rump smacked against the hard crack of wood and splinters and tears formed into the back of her eyes and her voice was carried away by that scream as it drew long, wispy words that couldn't even be explained far out of her lips, farther, farther out of her reach, and her heart began to ache with the cry.

She only wanted that hand off of her foot. It burned with the strength of vivosaur fire and those eyes, lemony and icy and pouring into cold, hard, fiery need, for this Dina, this Dina, over and over and over until she couldn't bear it and she kept screaming and kicking until she grew stuck and her skirt was ripping against the ground and suddenly, Ayumi's eyes were that darker blue she'd grown more used to than the sleepwalking color.

A final whisper. Not even from the girls in the room but from some ethereal presence shoving its greatness down her throat. "Where... did she go... I need to find her... I need to protect her..." When the cold body left and Rosie could finally breathe again, though now she really started hoping beyond hopes that there was a restroom nearby. She'd need one after that little experience she'd gone through. Yeah... She blinked dully and hoped she didn't look so bad. After Ayumi helped herself up and stared peculiarly at Rosie, the slightly-taller pink one pouted and let her know: "Wouldn't you remember to tell me if you sleepwalked all the time? Stop doing that! Stay awake more often! I thought you were going to—t-to eat me alive or something! I was terrified!" As if to prove her point, Rosie lifted herself onto her feet using pale pink hands and, as she plucked off the ground, her legs began to shake horridly and twist until one of them suddenly let out a bloodied _crroouulggghhhh._ They both decided that Ayumi had sleepwalking problems and the one with such illness hoisted Rosie, allowing one arm to trap around the pale bluenette's back, to get her as steady as can be. They hobbled onward together, Rosie's eye catching on the small, gnarled writing at the niche in the door, describing the name. **Classroom 5-A** , it read out in that creepy handwriting Rosie found should have been bereaved immediately and replaced with something much nicer. Some class-room this thing was. Whatever a class-room was.

Which reminded her. "Uh, hey. Ayumi? What the heck is a class-room? What are... what's with all the tiny tables and everything? Are there supposed to be corpses in here or something? Where I come from, we most certainly don't leave them lying around like that!"

"Do you think we're any less dignified or something?" she grumbled quietly, a bit peeved at the naïve girl with her loud, oblivious, airy questions. How could she look so relaxed after everything that had gone on? Ayumi, by now, understood that her sleepwalking didn't exist—preposterous hogwash—but... she'd done that... that thing again. Where... ghosts possessed her and she didn't even own her mind any longer, left to being a mouthpiece for the dead to speak from and control her with. She supposed it didn't matter whether Rosie knew what was going on or not, since she was... well, she was Rosie, to put it charitably. Ayumi just wanted to find her friends, she didn't care as long as they were okay and they all were together again, and it seemed the pinkette held her back. But being class rep, she had enough smarts in her head to know she needed someone else with her, and as minor as an annoyance, or perhaps worse, she was and had the ability to become, she was hobbling on a cracked leg and Ayumi could easily go insane without someone to watch over.

And thus, a slow but weak link formed between them: a friendship, the word should have been, but the special and precarious relationship they shared didn't even seem to fill that role enough. Ayumi sighed inwardly to herself, wanting to question what was going on in this strange place, but becoming all the more terrified to do so. As they hobbled in momentum, keeping their searching strictly, for now, to the first floor, due to injuries and in hopes of finding bandages or something as beneficial—but... if she had to, the class rep supposed she'd rip off a sleeve from her own yellow shirt and provide it for poor, limp Rosie, only as a very, very last resort though—and their words twisted together as the sixteen-year-old struggled to explain to a girl who happened to be older and stronger, by a few years, than her, what classrooms were about and the purpose of a school. Ayumi scornfully assured her they buried bodies or lit them aflame, they weren't supposed to sit and rot, ew no, and each of them shared that dislike of those slimy, gross things and that helped strengthen their precariously weak chain they were enforced to share with one another. The ghost-story-loving girl quietly explained to the clueless pinky about schools, about learning, about how that worked, to which Rosie responded that she had a grandfather who was like the smartest guy ever and they didn't have to use some silly school thing, they didn't need all that brain junk. It simply wasn't how they worked.

The two agreed to disagree on the matter. Ayumi tried not to shiver when Rosie mentioned the elder adult, her grandfather, and Rosie tried not to shirk from the thought of having eight entirely different people, almost none related at all, to feel like a family to her. The Dino boy she'd been rambling over was enough, and he was nowhere near that step. Oh, but she'd like him to be. The combination of lightheaded dizziness, loss of blood, inability to focus on one topic and want to flounce to others, and her new fantasies of that Dino boy picking her up and carrying her to somewhere romantic where they could be together forever: built up and all set Rosie in the fateful hands of Ayumi, beginning to bore from the endless chatter of the same stupid Dino boy.

Their words grew faint as they whispered down the corridors, into the catches of more corpses or other bits and pieces of unfortunate deaths, as a victim, a ghost now freely traveling betwixt spaces, so unbelievably free and dead and in need to find her, to find someone so important to him it mattered not anything else but of her, that he hardly noticed where he could have gone, that he could have looked out for the other people and vivosaurs out there, he could have checked on Torn and Trikko: all of which he, yes, did not do. He had one person to find, and one person alone.

Ultimately, for the time being, he was lost, and he had failed. His lonesome whisper cried out for the same girl's name, repeated on a mournful loop that only drew more pained each time his lips parted and his murmur was brandished, and she still could not hear him, until he grew entangled within the great nexus of spaces and soon found himself in a dark corridor he had not expected to see. It was drenched with a stench he could not smell and filled with color he could not see: the awareness of scissors following him and seeming to stab at him coldly, like old injuries he should succumb to and feel, diverted, because he never felt them. He was numb with the thought of that girl and the need to find her in all of its truth.

A single light echoed within the blackening corridors, and having nothing else to follow, this the ghost found as his path to use as his way. Perhaps this... could help him find the girl he so desired to seek out once more. It hurt to be so far away from her.

Down the winding corridors, past lanes of halls until the ground churned brown like chocolate slices stacked end on end, if not for the mesh of blood injected betwixt like bright red berries they all wanted it to be but knew it was not, Dina clenched to her new friend with the cheery, brown eyes and altogether sturdy hold. She was not anywhere near so strong and powerful and scary, but she had this sort of happy aura that felt bubbly and sweet, and Dina liked that. She clung to that, and she clung to the girl, too. She had nothing else to do, truthfully... nothing to reach out to, now. In her heart, somewhere, she could feel herself winding undone, because of what she had seen, and it was only matter of time before she lost it. Dina called it. The small, orange-haired girl waited for that moment, which had not quite landed on her yet, so her sanity continued to revolve in check, to a level, and she continued to be okay. She did not know what to say, though Mayu would turn her deep, dark green eyes on her and smile and look so cute and kind, hardly inches taller than the girl coiled against her but feeling that much taller because of which one struggled and which led.

Out of anything she could have chosen, Dina liked the hairstyle of the girl she stuck to a lot. She liked the short cut that fell just to the tips of her shoulders, and how there was a small, pink hairpiece twirling around one small portion of the smooth, chocolate sheen, gathering the tiny bit in a tidy bunch and securing it, letting the small part twirl as her head swung. She had a natural blush on her cheeks and a small, sweet smile. One of those personalities she could not help but find cute, reminding her of a friend of two. But they did not matter. Rupert mattered.

They moved on aimlessly, honestly. Mayu led her around the second floor, which Dina found to be in a thick H shape predominantly with the creaky, bloody hallways. The only corpse she could recall in this sad, old home was the one of Takahiro, who she still had yet to see again. A small part of her little self heavily doubted that she would see the wispy, wind-colored figure furthermore, for what had happened to her companion... and his crazed stare... it simply did not look likely. Any odds folded over and seemed inclined to stay away. She deliberated that no matter what, if she did see the tall boy with the slick, blue hair and the new-looking uniform, she would... yes, she would avoid him. Guilt clogged her, but reason flushed. And Dina hobbled on, clinging fitfully to the girl in the yellow shirt and blue skirt.

Gently, curiously observing, Dina looked in closer at the cute but interesting nonetheless of an attire. The long-sleeved yellow shirt covering the top of her body reminded her of the coat she wore which froze her in place for a good few moments, allowing her savior to have to drag her strongly until she could recover from it. Guilt should have swabbed up inside of her, but all she felt was the aching loss of a boy she could not stand to lose. Shaking herself gave up more precious moments of rationality without him overwhelming her senses where she took note of the oddity wrapped from the back of the girl beside her to where it intersected in the front and tied off on a small, looping pendant that glittered freely. It looked like... a cape. She did not understand why Mayu wore a cape but it so happened to be a cute cape and it fit her well so it was okay. Dina quickly took interest in the pleated skirt the color of a nice twilight after, feeling her face heat up at how observant she had come over this girl. In truth, her clothes fit her well and she even had cute, pink-striped socks scaling up to her knees and tiny, brown slippers: from this to her head, with the hair-tied-off section and her bright yellow shirt, everything matched accordingly, and Dina enjoyed it.

"Why... would there be... so much blood in here... if we have yet to... see any... um, thing, that'd trigger it?" mumbled her partner awkwardly. Her cheeks puffed as if to stifle the noise.

Dina, eyes feeling safer to track the ground and the innumerable pokes and holes in it, mumbled back, "It is... I... I do not know. It... is v-very l-l-lonely... h-here... a-and the... the inf-f-firm...ary... it... h-has many sc-scissors in it like... s-ome-thing... is u-used here..." Feeling dull in thought, she added cautiously to her original answer. "O-or per...haps... l-like in the othersp-...spaces... the-y ha-had too... much... ex-xcess... um, y-you... know... and they... r-removed it... here?" With that, a puff of breath escaped from her lips and she grew silent again. It felt odd attempting to talk to someone that was not a person she at least had faint ideals of. Though this was to be expected, as this... Heavenly Host—this school, it seemed to collect an astronomical amount more of people that proved more similar to Mayu than herself. At least, Takahiro appeared that way, and so did... that... r-right theghostgirl. She stopped thinking of such trivial matters. It made breathing easier.

Not quite easier. An atmosphere pockmarked with black stains and submerged with both the red fluid and metallic scent of it, alongside that ever-present reek of ammonia, kept Dina and her head spinning, wishing for Rupert, wishing for a way out; at some of her finest selfish moments of her life she began pleading with some voice in her head that Rupert be the one to live, to bring him back to life and take her instead: could they swap souls? They should be able to, she would think, eyes downcast. Rupert deserved life more than she did. He would have been better off leading Mayu through their old space they had once shared together, n-not the other way around. He would not be suffering like this and in such pain. He would... he would be okay... Dina was not that important...

Did... Did Mayu have anyone to look for? Auburn orbs met deep green as she pulled on the naturally pale arm and linked eyes with her new friend. "M-Mayu... i-is there... anyoney-you are... l-l-loo-looking for-r here..?" The sliver-of-taller girl with the cheerful build stopped, then, and her breath grew cooler so that Dina could feel it trickling down her arms like a gel and know she... perhaps she was unwise to ask that question. "S-sorry... Th-there is a gh-host named... T-Tak...ahi-ro... Takah-hiro, and he... he remind me... o-of you. By... cu-culture."

"A-ah... no. I don't know that name. Perhaps he's simply from the same place I am." As if she could sense how much colder the blood inside of Dina had started running, Mayu warmed it with a smile and asked, "What school are you from? The ones I'm looking for, and I, we're all here after doing a charm in... um..." She blanked. "Hmm, weird. I almost forgot my own school. It feels like I've been here for awhile, all the same..." Shaking the state from her face, Mayu and her soft, chipper tone continued. "Well, I remembered... So! We're here after doing our charm in Kisaragi Academy. Do you know the place?"

Again with such a kind, simple smile. Dina liked that smile. She wished she could tell Mayu but she did not know how. Compliments were... a-awkward... for her. "M-me? Oh..." Then she recalled that this was a school she currently stood in and she did not even have the understanding of such a place until the ghost had told her and Rupert. "I do not have one... Where I live... n-none of it truly... m-matters to big... a-astronomi...cal... matters. We know what... w-we need, and tha-t is... a-all... we need."

"Wow!" Small, bright stickers formed in the eye of her friend. "That's so interesting! Heheh... maybe the next play we do in Drama Club should be featuring this kind of character in the world you're from! That sounds really cool; seriously... I never knew a type of place like that existed. Wow, Dina..."

She did not know what to say. "U-umm... I have... never seen a-a school b-before... un-t-til... now..." forged into her lame response. "I... I am sure so-some of them are ni-ce but... this... is... m-my... first..."

Mayu, just as the slicked-back ghost boy had, looked incredulous with this information weighing down on her. "I'm sorry but... this is just so weird... and so interesting at the same time... Eheheh. When we've gotten out of this place and found our friends"—she paused as if in recollection to what lay above them, like the death of someone close to her, as it had been for Dina, hovered nearby—"I totally want to check out where you live. Wouldn't that be fun?" She giggled again, oh so softly.

"Y-yes... it would."

It had become a decision. Yes, she could... she could show Mayu around her home of the three Caliosteo Islands. Well, if... if her sanity held out first. Judging by the constant, cold flow of blood in her lurching veins, hope had begun to dwindle: dripping, dripping, slowly, dropping, losing, leaving her empty. Empty because she had lost him, and that was something she felt unable to handle in her life. She could have tried to hold a positive outlook was it not so crushed after seeing... seeing him... Dina shook her head. She could hardly focus on it and no way would have wanted to as was.

"Oh, sorry, I forgot about your first question! Silly me~" The sweet girl with her eyes the color of such sweet green, like the mysterious warmth would hug her, returned and spoke softer but brighter. "I'm looking for, well... these... It's kind of silly, I suppose, but there's a total of eight different people I'd like to find. I know... my chances are sort of slim... it's dumb to put such reliance like that—but they're practically... a family, of sorts, to me. And I love them all dearly. Though, in particular..." Eyes glassy, she trailed off.

Feeling dumb and without a clue whether this was a good idea or not, Dina tried to feed her another line to help her. "In... p-particular... y-you say?"

"Yes, in particular, there's this... one boy, who means very much to me. We're very close friends and it's not the same without him here with me. " Her... dear friend... "Well I mean I'm a friend to him but in honesty that's not... how I feel..." A small puff of a sigh drew from her lips. "I didn't want it to get awkward or something between us... so I haven't told him. But seeing all of the terrible things that I've seen in this place have practically fried my mind with the obvious showing that I should confess when I do see him again, because he means so much to me that... I can't possibly let him go without saying anything. I want him to know how special he is... and I... I have to find him!" Letting out a small wriggle in her body, Mayu stood straighter, warding off the blackness surrounding them even just a little more. "I can't let all of the worst-case scenarios get to me when there's such a more likely chance he'll be fine! He's strong like that, and I'm... really... not. When I find Shige-nii... I'll be so happy..."

From that point on, Dina found it. A small flicker of a flame in her heart, burning away with the ashes that had been left after she lost him. Having no other will for anything else in her life, after her heart had been stabbed out with the same ghosts of scissors that took her Rupert away from her, she had no motivation, no life, to live through, any longer. And she could hardly bear the prospect of living and moving her feet, and breathing, sucking in each scratching, worthless bit of air like a rather tasteless compound she was ready to do without.

And she considered it for a moment, as thoroughly as her broken soul could. And—yes—she was ready to die. She lost him, and she had fallen apart. Missing pieces framed inside of her because he was gone, and the struggling flame, the embodiment of her snapped self, remained her last hope. She would fuel the last of whatever the ramparts of her soul had become and make sure, if nothing else, Mayu could be reunited with this Shige-nii fellow and they could be happy together. Only glimpses and Dina felt rest assured the feelings filling this small, cheery girl... and already how she described this dear of hers: Dina, she needed to see them find each other again and pool into that joy before she cast herself into the strange pit of insanity. She felt it breathing down her neck, but it would not take her until Mayu was happy. It no longer mattered, those stray seven humans—six, no more Rupert; five, when Dina lost it—and those four stray vivosaurs, that she could have recognized.

Perhaps, once Shige-nii and Mayu were together again, she could help assist them in escaping this dreaded place and finally know that this strange, irrational world could not take away those feelings, such passion, from someone else. Mayu deserved this. Dina would not let another soul take it away from her. She wanted to do all she could with her dwindling aspects to assist. She could bring up that little girl, the headless one, and perhaps that could help, somehow...

Thoughts clicked into place, and all that Dina held dear to her clenched betwixt her shaking fingers, colliding with the fabrics on the shirt Mayu wore, showing off ripples of sunny yellow. Dina swallowed slowly, and it was decided.

 **Rosie: ...I don't like it here.**

 **Ayumi: Of course not! -w-**

 **Rosie: Wh-where's the exit?  
**

 **Ayumi: ...I'm not sure there is one...**

 **Rosie: DON'T CLASS-ROOMS HAVE EXITS, YOU IDIOT?  
**

 **Ayumi: -deep scowl-**

 **Me: GUYS CALM DOWN WE STILL HAVE LIKE TWELVE CHAPTERS AFTER THIS ONE YOU CAN'T RIP EACH OTHER TO SHREDS IN THE AUTHOR NOTES.  
Welp, school starts for me... next Monday. :3 But I should have chapter five uploaded around that time, so, uh... continue enjoying all the horror yay~  
Please do.  
It's been getting to me. owo**


	3. He was Missing

**Torn: -Can we please show what the fuck is happening to me right now? I feel very lonely.-**

 **Trikko: -Don't feel lonely. I'm right here.-**

 **Torn: -DAMMIT TRIKKO YOU DON'T COUNT. AND I WAS GOING FOR PITY POINTS.-**

 **Me: Why DOES EVERYONE SOUND LIKE THEY WANT TO EAT EACH OTHER?**

 **Dina/Rupert: -silent nope-**

Chapter Three: He was Missing

" _I can't find them anywhere! Yuka—YUKA! AT LEAST MY LITTLE SISTER—PLEASE!"_ The voice stirred the two girls with matching hairstyles, one much more alert than the other and responsive to that cry, thus her foot landing on the first's porcelain pink face with as skittish momentum and nearly causing more pain than gain. Ayumi, oh, she knew exactly who that was, and she knew who the higher-pitched male, his voice riddled in fear, was speaking of. Not knowing what else to do at the miraculous sensation, she joined in his cry.

"YUUUUUKAAAAAAA!" Then she thought better of it. "Satoshi—SATOSHI? DO YOU HEAR ME?"

It turned out that he rather did, and after a gasp and a pause of choking breath, the boy even managed to... to respond. _"Ayu—AYUMI! OH, GOD, I CAN'T BELIEVE IT! WHERE ARE YOU?"_ Still his voice felt wispy and ruptured, like they weren't completely in connection, in sync. Weird: they both called out for the same girl and each heard one another, but yet she couldn't feel his presence permeating the practically stale air coiling around her. The only warmth encircling her was the pink-haired girl in a grumpy, rumpled heap. So much for an attempt at sleeping. Ayumi had gotten possessed again—guilt swallowed her, but she couldn't help it and tried to act tough about it—and both decided it might settle their nerves to sleep. To cause less troubles, they'd just fallen onto the hallway floor of tinted purple and thick brown and tried. It more or less helped. Well, at least it meant she would be able to reunite with the adorable brunette she called at now.

"I'm over here—HERE, SATOSHI, HERE!" She even waggled her arms for emphasis, jolting and jumping with a sudden excitement.

But his voice sounded staler the next time he approached with it. _"Where—where?! I can't see you! AYUMI, WHERE ARE YOU!"_

Panic made a scene and stabbed through her heart, sending chills down her small self and bunching up her yellow and blue clothes. "I... u-um... I'M STILL RIGHT HERE, SATOSHI!"

" _Where... wheerrreeee..."_ And it only grew worse, a dense, dreary fog ensconcing her heart and hanging her head as if from a puppeteer's string or a noose until the unfortunate crack of two skulls colliding sounded from their breaching of noise and she ceased to hear the boy again. The last words were of some ratty boy who sounded just about out of his teens, giggling and scorning her beloved friend. Ayumi fumed at that, about ready to figure out what that kid had to say to poor Satoshi, but the connection simply severed, and there was no chance.

Rosie, an impeccably late bloomer, hatched her head from the floors and sprung up, like she recognized the tone. As it'd died out, her magenta eyes fogged and she shrugged underneath her soft, springy cloths that clutched at her so feebly, relentlessly. "Oh well."

Ayumi bit her lip and nearly told her off; one didn't oh-well it when they'd just heard someone who meant an impeccable bunch to them and they heard the other and it was almost a connection: but it fluttered, fell through, and somehow escaped, like the breath bated on the tip of your tongue in the middle of a snowstorm. Warm for half a second, then driven back into the chill. Like when you held someone you loved in your arms and watched, powerless, as they flat out died there, and you never felt them again. Like... like—countless, wordless scenarios spilled over her, a turmoil-induced wave of agony producing clips of memories she could hardly explain or remember or even begin to understand, and then beneath shone the shorelines and suddenly Rosie spiked up on the spot. "Ayumi! Stop standing there! Shouldn't we be, like, doing something?"

For once, she found herself unfavorably below the pinky in action. Because she was right: why did the uniform-clad girl stiffen on the spot like a sore, stilted human being, when she'd just heard the voice of a tall and cowardly boy calling for his little sister? How did that demand sense? Shaking herself off, feeling like she was peeling away the cold touch of the dead—and for all she knew, she might have been—Ayumi staved from the frost and, plucking Rosie's tepid, not-so-coincidentally rosy fingers and set off in a random direction far away from the first-floor hallway at the north-end, turning back from classrooms **4-** and **5-A.**

Perhaps they had left fingerprints of clues behind, or if they moved on, the girls could hear the shaken boy again. Though cowardly, he stood up for friends in need and despised to leave his spoiled little sister—Yuka, as he'd called—out of his sight. She was a cute, dainty child and of course Satoshi hated the thought of leaving little fourteen-year-old Yuka behind. He must have been searching for her until... until... _that noise_ happened. What did it even mean? Cold, spilling shivers spluttered down her spine and Ayumi safely decided she'd rather not dwell on it. She instead invoked idle chitchat with the nonstop Rosie to try and calm her senses. It was an oddly relaxing sport.

"So, Rosie... how did you end up here again?"

"Mm? I have no idea." She coughed. "None at all! I mean, seriously, you'd think that I'd have a reason, but I, like, don't! I was sleeping in my bed, it was late at night. You know, boring, usual stuff. Then suddenly I just... I woke up. I dunno. I'm not one to randomly wake up in the middle of the night—well, I did it a lot when I was like four and kept wetting the bed, but that's water under the bridge." Ew. That it was, Ayumi hoped. "So it was totally unexpected! And I just sat there in the dark, feeling like a complete idiot, debating whether to go find Dino, who's, see, a really big dummy but that's okay, and then the floor split open and now I'm here!"

"Mm... so you didn't use a charm. I've never met someone who came here by means other than the Sachiko Ever-After charm... well... other than the victims..." She mumbled off into her own loophole, leaving Rosie all but completely dry of evidence to what could have been locked in her brain. When the whining persisted, and it became obvious Rosie's curiosity was killing her, Ayumi decided—what the hell, might as well try to make sense with what was picking at her. Her calmer tone rambled out again: "Well... I mean... not all of the corpses here are from just those who heard about the charm to get them stuck in this curse, right? There's bound to be a few that were here from.. the beginning. And they probably were sent here by... oh, who knows what?" Trailing clues hinted at something just behind her flap of memory, drawing in fog and spotting out what she wanted to recall the most, until it remained obvious this wasn't the way to go. The bluenette snorted and, crossing her arms, turned around to face the tottering Rosie again. "You alright with going up some stairs, Rosie?" she called back airily.

The pattering of pink slip-ins on rough wood steadily rose in volume until the heavier, not posh or large but simply more average, heavier girl, in stature, practically cascaded upon her. "Hmm? Ayumi, did you say stairs? Oh boy, oh boy; we haven't gone up these suckers in awhile! Just wandering on the first floor and passing out until just now... heheh, cool." Like a boat, the pinky wobbled and collapsed, shoving both girls spiraling into the floorboard-like sea and forcing Ayumi's Student ID, which had been strapped so tidily and strong to her chest, to rip off with a swatch of sunny yellow fabric and bounce into the stairwell.

"A-ah..." River-blue orbs went stormy. "A-AAAH! NO! NO NO NO NO NO! THIS CAN'T BE! NO NO NO NO—" Impossibly, her morbid screams were hollowed out by the shattering smashes and bleak breaks of an earthquake, tumbling and shuffling and crushing the two girls already contorted together in a furthermore awkward position. Dainty and pale fingers went horribly scrabbling at the intersection of the wooden floorboards as they morphed into stairs and just happened to have that one, stupid hole in there: and it was done. Seamlessly closed. If the memo wasn't obvious enough, her own paper scrap from that charm?

It was just swallowed up into the school.

Her face contorted and paled rapidly. Without the shattering of the earthquake to rattle her out, she tipped her head back and wailed horridly: bleated noes and denies and inabilities, how impossible this had to be: Why her? Why her? Why her? She sobbed and tumbled back and curled up with her knees folded under her arms and sobbed and didn't care when the splinters struck and from her rigorous reactions produced blood from her nose to limply stream down her face. The tears mixed with it and Ayumi became a mess. Just like that.

Through her entire reaction, as it folded into place, Rosie had no idea what to do. She didn't know that her name was so important it had to be stapled onto her chest at all times, didn't get why Ayumi was so upset about it. Heck, she'd gone through worse, for all she knew: that same Dino boy once robbed her of her precious hat and outright refused to return it to her. She'd lost her shoes to him, too, but seeing all of the splinters here had made her grab a pink pair of slip-ins the moment she found one sitting around in this messy little school thing. Prevented so many bruises and cuts and the like. Still feeling stuffy and idiotic, Rosie stared at the malfunctioned Ayumi and felt incredibly threatened to do something but wasn't completely sure what that was. Well... Rosie stopped and thought about it for a moment, clicking her slip-ins on the ground thoughtfully in a small surveillance of their tiny, cramped corridor leading up to a mountainous flight of steps leading further, higher in the school. To a second floor.

It was apparent those stairs couldn't be scaled anytime soon. She still understood nary a thing about this Ayumi weirdo, but with her she felt safer and she seemed to know a lot about this place, almost as if she'd been here a lot of times and was practically—not fully but... practically—a part of this scary place already, and that freaked her out a little bit: no it actually scared her senseless but all she had was Ayumi so she better shut up about it and suck in her breath, lock it in course, and, well, acceptance. They both had lost important things on their persons, but see, Dino probably still had the hat—she hoped—and... that name tag thingy was gone. Squinting, pulling her up, Rosie tried to ignore the cord of blood and lines of snot dripping down the poor, undersized girl's face from the tip of her thin nose and, placing her aside, lying her ripped-clothed back against a nearby wall, bent over and began tugging loosely at the board on the bottom of the stairs.

Pink slip-ins that were admittedly not even her own buckled against the walls as she tugged. Around her, like wisps of clouds, her magenta skirt rippled back and as hard as Rosie tugged, as far in as her porcelain pink fingers could go, it seemed like she was simply unable to open up that stupid hatch. "HEY, YOU!" she screeched, first at no one in particular. "LET US GO! LET US GO! I WANT IN THERE, SO GIVE ME A CHANCE ALREADY! UGH! You _turd!"_ Dino would be so proud of that last insult. As her words spiraled and her struggling increased and she needed, needed to get this done and needed to do this, her words directed toward the school itself, or just the people behind it. "COME ON! COME _ON!"_

Ghostly pale fingers covered hers. Rosie's breath stopped in her throat and she suddenly couldn't breathe. Long, thick strands of black hair fell over her face as some creature in a ragged, red dress sat on her lap and forced herself between Rosie and her target. The little thing's tiny fingers squeezed, and overlapping pinky, enabled the wood to cease to be stubborn and peel open like a banana. Rosie stared, dumbfounded, through the veil of black, whip-like strands of hair. Somewhere behind her, Ayumi's teeth began chattering and she sounded like she was coughing up blood.

The little thing that jumped Rosie didn't even say a word, didn't even breathe. How she held her breath for that long was such a mystery that as the minutes brandished and drew by, Rosie began to wonder if the strange thing even could breathe. Oh—oh gosh, did she know about Dino? Where was he? She had to find him! Chatter drowned out the breathing she should have heard from the little thing. "Oh my gosh, while you're here: please please, please tell me! Do you know where Dino is? I swear I saw him around here somewhere and I'm going crazy not knowi—"

Any questions were drowned out by the sudden crack in her ribcage and the _splurt_ of blood. A silent accusation was asked: _Do you want to question me again?_ that vile little thing seemed to quiz her, over and over and over again. Thankfully, Rosie had enough sense to shut up about it, and once the board tore loose under her fingers, the spirit thingy was gone and all Rosie had to recall of her existence was the loose board limp in her scrawled fingers and a mess of blood and sinew now tearing up the front of her chest. Oh, geez, what hadn't she done to herself? A leg was twisted and crusted in dried blood; she wore shoes meant for little children and they didn't squeeze but still; splinters dominated the circles in her knees; snot and blood crusted under her nose; she was scared out of her mind; and now the rip in her shirt and tank top and the web-like veins spluttered out through that. Her grandpa was going to ask some serious questions when this was all over.

"He-hey... Ayumi..?" Rosie attempted to move and—what do you know—her leg clenched and its wound opened right back up. "A-aah... Ayumi!" Oh, turd it, she'd try a nickname to get her to listen. "AYUU! GET UP ALREADY AND HELP ME! PLEASE! I'M STUCK! AYUU—AYUU—AYUU!" Rosie squirmed beside herself and felt lonely.

 _Rrrr...rrrrrrip—_

A yellow sleeve wrapped about her leg and soon became a secure bonding for her leg. "D-does that... help?" she sniffled through her nose. "R...rose..?" Whispered it, like a question not only for her assistance but her name as well. It seemed they were going to get along a little better now, with their injuries collecting and... well... Rosie'd helped her friend. That meant a little something.

Discarding the loose board to the side for now, gesturing, Rosie smiled a little and smirked. "Yeah, that works well. Thank you... heh... Ayuu." Looks like she'd be calling her that now. It didn't seem like the worst nickname in the world.

"Why did you call me that in the first place..." A question was attempted to be attached to it, but Ayumi could hardly muster a voice as it was. She could hardly believe Rosie had gone through all of that and even let the creepy girl who sat on her and ripped her ribcage open—that girl—and still... to do all of this for the bluenette she hardly even knew.

Rosie stopped, turned back, grinning sheepishly. "Uuuuuum... I was tryyyyying to get your attention, so I thought I'd just shout a shorter version of your name over and over again. Apparently, though, the first one worked. So... that's good... Ah—um, if you don't mind me asking, why is your name tag so important? I get what you mean, see, I have this hat that means a lot to me but Dino stole it an—"

To cut off that girl's endless chatter, Ayumi raised her voice. Somehow, the sobs it encrusted crumbled back enough for her to end Rosie's awkward tangent. "Well, everyone in my group: we did a charm to get here in the first place, and... it sort of keeps me linked to them. We repeated the phrase _Sachiko, we beg of you_ nine times, one for each person, and then ripped this paper doll apart. And my piece was in my ID and without it..." She shook her head, scrubbed at a miffed face cold from the tear stains. "I feel like my only way to find them again is lost... a-and I need to be with them all again! All eight of them! I don't care how weird it is, but I do!" We all have important people, Rosie silently doted. She even had a few. Dino, her grandpa; lots and lots of Dino.

"It's not weird at all, I swear!" a pink-lipped smile comforted her new friend. "We all need to stick together here, and if these are the people you've been trapped here with you... and if you know them all so well... then it's fine." Abruptly then, Rosie shoved her pink porcelain face into the crack under the stairs and screamed something garbled. Ayumi took a nab at her legs and unearthed the smudge-stained girl once more, who coughed dirt and rubbed at her eyes, further smearing it until tears led streaks of cleanliness down to her throat. "I think..." A cough broke free, and she finished in patchy minutes after it ended. "I think that's... where we'll have to go, Ayuu."

She simply retorted with: "Then I suppose we will, Rose," with a scrunched up gleam in her eye. But seeing this pathway to safety again revealed, Ayumi felt hope, and she clenched at the wrinkles in her torn, yellow shirt, one arm missing a sleeve, holes punctured into its chest, splinters on her back: and she believed well enough.

Wending down assortments of hallways, none at all that connected, the majority limp and swinging from cracks that assured anyone passing by these were hazardous places missing a few boards, a few more than they could spare, and the pair of similar females both subdued into their fears and depending on each step, each motion onward for their abilities to continue moved slowly, embroidered patchwork up the web of yarn, slow and steady and careful, the clicking of needles—scissors, with all due and realistic respect—not far off in the distance. Dina and her crumbling brain had lost enough of a barrier that all she had left inside of her were the ashes and the flames burning because of the cute, smaller girl—taller than her, all the same—beside her with those, deep, comforting green eyes. They clung to one another for they had no one else to cling to, and each having quite docile and quiet natures, this was a silent and immediately mutually accepted event.

Dina more so held fear ingested to her veins, but the loss of her dear Rupert had eventually smoothed her over to such a rate that she almost appeared calm, like the place she had been tossed into was not such a purgatorial homeland. Her eyes, though, clung to deep, dark rivets of circles below that suggested she was more or less done with her visit to Heavenly Host. And she honestly was. More than anything she had ever wanted before, Dina yearned to find herself back in the Caliosteo Islands again where her nights swarmed with flogging nightmares and Rupert always held onto her, and her five mighty—in their own ways—vivosaurs always rippled into her mind with their telepathic connection—as all species had it—and they spoke with her through the majority of each day. She had Torn and Trikko, and the bird beauty who had tried to stop them, Nyra, but also a brown fuzzball with incredible energy who was small enough on his own to be carried by the name of Aladee and a large, spunky biped with grayscale tone of colors and was blind and deaf, and she was Reyna. Having such a close connection to the vivosaurs, her heart whimsically ached for them.

But she could not go home and simply see them again. No: she lost Rupert and she knew sooner or later, once Mayu and her Shige-nii were reunited, Dina would lose herself. This had become her final purpose; she promised herself that because she could hardly bear to go on as it was. As morbid, as horrid, as pathetic as it sounded, all the little orange-haired girl wanted to do was drop over and die in the coat of the boy she so held dear and see him again. She no longer cared about living: no more. Still, a promise had come a promise, and she would hold on for the sweet, cheerful girl beside her. It looked dangerous to encounter these holes and rifts alone.

When they walked, her mind grew numb with her furthermore-callousing bare feet, sanded away by the _scraape, sccraape, ssscrape_ of feet on broken floors, only repeated, redundant background noise deposited to the very edges of her livid mind. Dina lifted a head and quietly asked the girl: "H-have you s-seen an...any... gh-gho-ghosts... here... Mayu..?"

"I..." She shook her head gently. "I feel like... I have, which is weird, because I thought I've never been here before... but it so feels as if I have... and I can practically see their faces in the back of my head; a-ah... aa...aah..." The girl moving steadily with Dina suddenly stopped and squeezed her eyes shut. "They were in... the infirmary with me... th-the first time I came here... the v-v _very_ first time. And I... was sc-scared... and I didn't see anyone... so I followed them, y-you know? It's scary here and I hated being all alone." The colorful banter so commonly the tone Mayu used had gone chilly and twitched. Dina combined hands with the shivering younger girl, regret swamping her and even as she tried to convince her otherwise than to continue, her mouth was somehow cut off and she could not continue.

She looked... so afraid. "Then Ayumi and Yoshiki: th-they found me... but those two little girls... looked so sad and they charmed me into their home and I was listening them... and I helped them and when I was thrown out of their enchantment they drew me through the hallways at high-speed... s-superhuman speeds and"—her fingers yanked and dragged Dina to the ground with her, where they fell hard, so hard down a hole that they tumbled and lost the floor around them—"and they killed me." Dina turned up and saw as she slipped and caught only air and Mayu beside her that a pair of little girls had stuck their heads down the puncture in the ground. One of them was missing her head, the other with her short locks of hair tied into two hairpieces and a small, cute face, but then something gloppy hit Dina squarely on the forehead and she saw a stain of red marking one of her eyes and practically the half of her face in a gooey conglomerate quietly telling her the orb was completely missing.

Somewhere within the simmering nexus of floating, connected spaces, this _ssssssspPLAT_ of two females hitting the ground dragged into another space. A boy looked up from the light splayed on the ground with ears twitched at the sudden cry. He surely recognized them each as feminine cries and backed down from the top steps he stood on now at the very edge of the third floor of the school. If he only took a few more paces he would have been led into the bathrooms for the little girls and the little boys of Heavenly Host Elementary School and could have investigated more corpses, perhaps finding another clue. But the screeching beckoned, so he left the flayed body where he'd found it, the glasses perched on the tip of his nose flashing as he set up on his brisk gait down.

 _Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptap..._

Reaching the end of the twisting staircase and checking out into the halls, the black-clad boy swiveled his head with no luck in sighting a soul that he could recognize, and quietly cursed his jumpy muscles. "Goddammit... at this rate anything I hear will make me think she's been injured..." He had a soft and deep tone, gentle to a degree but if he grew terse he could surely yell if someone or something stepped in his way. Surely not an authoritative presence, but one noticed and a strong one nonetheless, the boy raised his blue-haired head and looked blankly at the device curled within his fingers, radiating a warmth as phones do and displaying that photograph of the body he'd just taken. A strange, dim light let off from the cellular device and left a ring around him, like a holy entity in the midst of a purgatorial embodiment.

Green eyes, dim beneath the sheen of his glasses, even so, flitted about slowly. "No Mayu..." he quietly observed. "Oh... where could she be..." A slurred shake of his head, glasses catching on the light of his phone, and he sighed softly. He wanted to find her. Yes, the others in his heart meant something to him as well but: but Mayu... there was something about her he couldn't shake off, no matter how much he denied it. Seeing his other hand clenching nothing but air and shaking beside itself, he flickered between photographs in his other hand on the thin phone and eventually _beep-beeped_ his way into his first image, what he'd woken up next to.

Red stained the walls in a thick, encircling arc: the first thing one noticed about the strange picture he'd captured forever on the memory card of his slim, silver-colored phone. And Mayu's was silver, too, he recalled, because she'd wanted them to match. Hand shaking, his eyes dove into the scene of morbidly-strewn flesh and blood and gloppy, gooey mess that he could even smell from where he stood, a good walk away as it was. Breathtaking, like the bursting petals of a flower about a shard of a pulpy center, spinning with the same single color, red, that spread off into such an infinity of different tints and hues and shades and pinks, even, that it was impossible to count them all. And he loved it; and he loved this single picture. And he took more of the other bodies he found here. Not a particularly massive number, but there were some.

Somewhere far inside of his soul, in the depths where not even someone as registered as he could notice, he had begun to crack. Little did he know just how much he adored that first photograph. Little did he know that the first photograph meant more than a scene from a stranger. It was no stranger. He didn't recognize or worry about the ground below him, such a charred black it looked like a completely disused facility, like the existences all in this space weren't supposed to even be here. The boy tossed his head back and saw in mild disinterest the gaze of a dead child staring back at him, one with a eye missing. Yes, he was in a dangerous place where the living shouldn't be caught in, and he didn't even know a word of it. He was furthermore trapped than his own friends.

The air was deafeningly cool in this school. Like it wanted to ice off and chip away his entire body and scoop the life out of him with gelid fingertips. Perhaps collect his tongue: many of the interesting dead specimen here surely had that. He quietly shook his stone-faced head and walked onward, quietly slipping past the gloppy mess he'd woken up next to, explaining the slime of red down his back that had dried before he'd woken and thus didn't seen and, gently tapping by that funny-looking corpse of the... the perhaps fin, the silvery and white and black-tinged fin thicker than his entire body and just lying through the room like a sea creature had been killed here, Shige-nii calmly plodded over that through the disconnected region.

On the inside, his mind was being played with by strong forces he should not have been around.

Already he had begun passing by the mangled crafts of corpses of souls that were not quite dead in their own realms, and the more that caught his eye, the further of these actor-like creations that weren't even right over the eerily dark hallways, blackened like ashes and stomped at the foot, none of this was right, and he was caught in the midst of it. And did he think another thought of it? Unless the spiritual anomalies influenced his presence, like he was a fine spiritualist, then no: it was safe to presume he took nothing of it. And should he have? No. Not exceptionally.

Any and all of these notions floated over the glasses-donned boy's head, completely unheard of for such a blinded specimen like him. They say the spirits are always watching, though he was the sort of person who took no note of these things and furthermore found no contempt or serious worry to rouse him. What mattered were the thoughts, pounding, repeating, in his skull, attacking him from within and carrying out his need to continue moving and searching, and find a way out of this death-smelling hole for some monster or another. He personally could shrug off what he found. Unlike the others he knew so well, he could easily pertain to these sorts of things. Having not thought of this until now, the sixteen-year-old blinked dully to himself and continued waving his phone, the bright LCD screen becoming the beacon of his search.

Eventually it caught onto the rosy, magenta face of a creature. The boy saw this and took a stronger, faster gait to examine the corpse before anyone else did. It sat in a curled-up fetal position with its head wrung out and thrust through a window rung along the side of the hallways, its pink face gaping open with breath it couldn't seem to quite catch. As he scrutinized this poor, lost soul, trying to look for what made her lose such precious life, he could see the rest of her pink-clad body dangling from behind her, the fleshy bits of her ice-cold neck sticking into a point on the broken, rough window edge. A thick liquid seeped through the point of puncture. Though her arms were left helpless, scrabbling against nothing but the edge of the window and unanimously unable to stop her ultimate loss of life, they sat limp now, more ropes than once a precious vessel of life sustaining flesh and bone and blood and holding an entire human being in twin limbs that had been so important for life necessities.

The slack jaw held a lolling tongue that gagged inside of her cage of partly-clenched rows of miniscule, white teeth. He found that to be important: the fact that the corpses in this space all had tongues, and it gave off a sense of ill-will, like that was... wrong. It was wrong enough to kill people, but for it to be worse that their tongues remained in piece? He questioned none of it, nevertheless. It was decided he had nothing else of use to do other than stand here and stare at the poor, oh so pink girl. He couldn't help her; she was dead; so dead the entirety of her body heat had dropped away, leaving the icy cold shell of a life left behind, like the rinds in a mug that once held a steaming cup of coffee.

Slowly, the glasses-flashed boy stepped away with the gentle sound of his slippers and left the poor thing to fend for herself, not before capturing its picture forever in his memory card. But she was dead, so in all honesty it didn't even matter. Stepping down one of many random, out-of-order hallways, he found it ever the odder that he felt there should have been a dip in the wall here, and a door for a science lab over here, then another entrance for an infirmary further along. But it wasn't so. At the very edge of the long trip there did happen to be a splattering mass of smelly, rancid blood and bone, the place he'd woken up at, but the dip should have been further up, and the hallways weren't supposed to be so numerous and pointed toward every which way. Weird, but he felt like it. Still, the further he roamed, the stranger his struggling road became, the harder it was to fight.

Fight what? That, lonesome Shige-nii didn't know, longing for that name to be called of his again, but he could tell whatever battle this may result in, he was losing. His vision had gone blurry, even through the assistance of his glasses, and red seeped into spots and stayed and... swished, like a breeze was bound to peel it off and carry it away, and the harder the lost, lonely boy struggled, the further it pinpointed him and the darker his surroundings came, until not even the light on his phone's bottomless battery—oh, why wouldn't it die already, like the corpses surrounding him, soon for him to join—could stop him. He curled into a useless heap in front of the flower-like atrocity on the walls and, feeling its organs squish beneath his bent knees and toes, he called out to it. He pleaded for it. He asked for it to show him where Mayu had gone—where any of his friends had gone whatsoever—and how he could even begin to find them again. Thick, coiled, black ink choked him down the throat and began to make him lose his own tone until he could hardly stand it and felt lost in the masses of himself.

Shige-nii confessed that he acted distant to most people, but he claimed he did—he did—open up to eight other souls and they were all in this diabolical mess with him, and he begged, begged for this splatter on the wall to show him the way and reach a heavenly massacred finger and please, just show him what he had to do, and he'd do it. He'd forever listen to the corpse; please, simply let him find them again, he was going crazy and he was losing his mind and it was dark—if nothing else could prove him enough persuasion to get him out, he'd add that in too. And it was. He could hardly see, much less feel, anything around him. He felt cold. He felt aching. He felt so horribly lonely... and so far away from the others...

And nothing happened. His head leaned toward the ground, and the fissures in his soul cracked open. Hell, tears formed like ponds in the smooth skin betwixt his eyes, rubbing and protruding drops of the waters to fall from his gelid cheeks and stain his shirt, dribbling down from his throat and hitting the cuffs and staying there, nestled in his collarbone. No matter what he said, and what he did, the beautiful thing did nothing. He began whispering to it, excited sparks of words that had lost all sanity when—

"You."

It cut off his mind, to hear something else call out to him.

"Your name is Shige-nii, from what I have seen. I know no last name, I know no first name, I know no given name, just a simple charm from a girl I encountered:"

And he said it again.

"Shige-nii.

"The one I hold dear to me has found the one that you hold dear to you." He didn't even deny it as a single name rose up from within him and came out again as a whisper among his lips. "They both... if we wish for them to survive... They do not stand much of a chance alone."

Sitting beside him had proved to be a spirit of light-blue coloring and sad orbs that felt the emotion locked inside the taller boy he sat by. Then again, said spirit was short naturally, and this other boy was of average height. Even still, this soul garnered attention: he, unlike the labeled Shige-nii, had an authoritative presence that others felt and hushed to. It had given him, alongside other things, such of his princely feel and title. His ghostly-white face and locks of soft, once-white hair rose and shook the slightest with the movement, as he watched Shige-nii open up. His dark orbs spilled over from the edge of destruction and he seemed to have regained enough sense to open up his tightly-clenched fists, crawling with blood and maggots from the pile in front of him of what had to be—what had to be a dead version of that girl he was talking about, Mayu, had to be, he recognized the form and he could feel in him that had once been Mayu and now it was Mayu in this strange space, but it was truly not, but Shige-nii recovered from whatever had seized him and raised his head to face the ghost beside him with the gentle, soft tone.

Rupert warmed in his heart when he saw that the boy was not even fazed to be speaking with a spirit this entire time. Perhaps he would have smiled, but Rupert could not remember the last time he had smiled. The day he did... he wanted Dina to be there, at least. "Mayu," he rasped, like he hadn't spoken for a long time, and for all Rupert knew, that might have even been the case; "You speak of Mayu. And... someone else... you would rather keep alive."

"Yes," he chimed softly, "yes." At all costs, he yearned for Dina to live, knowing all the same of the thoughts rotting in her brain, that all the sweet little orange-haired girl with the silvery twist just as he had wanted was to be with him, she could not bear to be without him and already decided that she would soon die from the loss of it. And still, he wanted her to continue breathing... at least a little longer. "They both act... quite similar." Shige-nii smiled at the thought of a second Mayu milling about. She wouldn't be the exact same, but it would be cute to meet a girl similar to the one he held so dearly—a friend like her. "But from this...

"I fear all three of you are close to becoming just what I have come to." A ghost. Shige-nii quietly observed that this ghost boy with the attractive face—simply from a noticed matter—and glowing eyes, he had been a good person, somewhere deep down inside of him, and that part of him was... a large piece of him he had been forced down from and only opened to that girl of his that was with Mayu now. He could see it. Not as bright and cheery, perhaps, but still soft and cute and huggable and small, the perfect girl for a boy so lost in darkness. And perchance his one way out. Lifting himself out of what he would never know to truly be the ashes of the girl he so loved, Shige-nii followed after the blue-flickering spirit, all he could see in the thickly-dark hallways any longer, and all his gaze could hold onto was this boy whose name he didn't even know, but to whom he had just trusted his entire life unto.

Rupert was most indefinitely correct about his assumptions, as he had glanced upon the jumbled scene prior. In truth, he always, continuously checked over Dina and her new friend and always, continuously worried for their safeties, sensing enough from the feelings locked inside that all the girl, so cute in her sweet little self, had wanted, was to find him again, and free herself from this prison she called life. She... wanted him back. The boy had accepted that what he did was selfish... to die for her... and force her to go on living without him, but in all due honesty: he could not have lived as long as Dina was now if they switched places. Dina had freed him from a cage meshed that forged his cold and distant outer shell and locked in however truly gentle and lonely he was until she tore down that cage and Dina was all that mattered to him, and all that ever would.

A head bound of orange waves and small, thin bangs across her pale-as-death forehead arose first. Her shoulders quaked and the breath in front of her face billowed with shivering cold and fatigue. As she moved, the unstable crunch of broken bones and perhaps other body organs moved with her, and she caught a glimpse of her body, now stained with a thick scarlet she had never seen before. Slowly, gently pushing a shaky hand to the surface, fanned out with cold, empty fingers, the whiff of metallic fluid and sight of blood was staggering enough to send the weak little girl to the ground again. Her head spiraled and stars poked through her eyes, and shivers arced down her spine. The female next to her lifted herself and took intake of what she saw of Dina.

"A-ah..." Mayu was a bit taken aback at the sight of her friend. "D-Dina!" Green eyes set ablaze with concern and determination, the chocolate-haired girl flung herself to her side and, her pink hairpiece twirling, set to assisting the shorter and weaker though older girl up onto her feet. Surprisingly, though her entire body sustained scarlet-stained injuries and she squished when she made move, the richly-red coat with the white stripe down the middle, fitting snug over her tiny body, had no such stains, and had there been any, they looked to have been smeared or wiped off until indistinguishable. Mayu knew the odd girl didn't want to have that coat mussed up, but to see it so clean when the rest of her sent chills down her spine: something had laid a finger on her when they collapsed, she knew it.

The bright Kisaragi girl herself felt a pang of warm but confusing surprise when she glanced upon herself and found that her own body held no such scratches and just a minor set of wounds. Taking sight of what had come over Dina, she gently shredded off pieces of the sleeves on her bright yellow shirt, not even questioning any of it, to secure and bandage as many places as she could, especially the signs of injury on her head and the rip across her face, scaling over her nose like a bridge.

As her lukewarm palm placed upon Dina's cold forehead, she winced and mumbled, "What happened to you if I'm so... unmarked? Who did this to you?"

Like magic, her paper-white skin tackled onto a pink tone that shed upon her like a sunrise. "I... d-did this t-tomy...self. To-t-to... protect you..." She'd landed on top of this poor, tiny girl who barely didn't make it to five feet tall. This girl who must have just become an adult at the youngest, so tiny yet obsolete and childishly stubborn in ways that seemed to harm her but help others: Mayu must have... crushed her.

"Aaaaah! Dina, don't do that! Look what you've done to y-yourself!" Mayu shook her head fiercely, taking Dina by the shoulders and looking into her auburn orbs deeply. "Thank you, but... don't d-die on me..! I want to look after you, too... Next time, please, let me take some of the pain, too." Dina shook her head, but Mayu grunted and, cutely pouting, shook hers back, and Dina dropped her gaze, blush growing thicker. Mayu felt successful enough. "Now why don't we... er..." Turning round, she caught sight of a door— **Classroom 4-A—** and straight in front of her stood a formidable-looking piece of furnishing. Another door, this one glittering with what had to be copper lining and a strong knob that, when she rushed to turn it and open, didn't budge whatsoever, but gave off an unsettling screech, like it was a monster o-out to get her. Fiercely, staring that the door with a sudden, feverish glint, Mayu pulled again and again with no hope of surging it free but feeling that thing to be so incredibly important for her.

Slowly, the shivering girl pocked with red and injury sauntered up to her. "M-Mayu... w-wewill... h-have to search for a... a key... o-or something." Gently, seeing she would not back down, her cold, pale hands took the semi-larger and warmer ones, leading her away from the brass engraving. "W-we will... figure it out." A secure whisper for someone with such a relentless stutter seeping into her tone. Having no one else to listen to and not a clue what to do, Mayu allowed the girl to hobble her way up and down the halls until they came upon the Classroom 4-A once more and, upon entering, saw something with a purple-esque hue glinting in the background. But try as she might, Mayu couldn't reach it from the doors they'd entered at the back of the class, as too many cluttered desks and holes in the ground left it stuck. She didn't want Dina to have to get up and move all over again so as she sauntered by, holding up a hand for her to stay, and their skirts—beige from a nightdress and a pleated blue—collided in their wakes.

The item transported as a shadow of a small girl entered from the other side and it fell right into the dizzied gaze of the feverish Dina, who managed to lope for it and hold it up high. Once Mayu rushed back, she plucked it from tired Dina's hands, whose cheeks were now flushed and she looked to have caught a sickness, making her heart pule from such a sight, and rubbed at the gleam until its core became bright and gleaming as well: a key. She wanted to immediately rush over and try the door, but Dina gently pointed out, through a sneeze, that the door had no keyholes punched into it. This was no trivial matter. Leading her to the front of the room, pushing back a hefty, wood-encased cabinet and pointing at a door she must have seen prior, Dina gently took the key and, fitting it into the lock, smiled. A perfect fit. It fell open and revealed both in the room a strange, wired mechanism and a small note.

Mayu's eyes glanced over it curiously: **We know there's no escape from this hell, so we decided our safest fate, after finding one another again, was to die here together. The ghost child with the scissors was around and so were these other horrors, and... to die in each other's arms in sleep seemed like our best be—**

Dina was glancing over at it. She quickly pent over and plucked it from the smaller girl's view, mumbling that it was obscene; truly, her mind tied over with that boy she cried over and she knew this would have upset her. Mayu didn't know that Dina was virtually illiterate. Leading back to the mechanism, a purple circle of sorts with plugs and tubes of the same color attaching it to a desk with thin piano wires loaded into it—she suspected that first visit to this place must have told her what these things were and how she knew so well about it—Mayu saw that a key beneath said desk looked to fit inside a hole in the machine, and, pressing into it, set it to work with awkward creaks and stretches.

Blinded with the stuffy nose and headache causing her sickened pain, Dina did not understand much of what happened, but took the bigger and warmer hand offered to her and led her to another room with another locked door, their tag team of two keys befitting each lock in its own places and showing off another machine, opening up other cracks in the ground and allowing a slow passage to and fro until each one appeared to be open, as the little Dina was satisfied, and she took Mayu back to the brass door and fell into a rest at the foot of it.

Her fingers connected with the shining knob, and she tugged.

Nothing whatsoever occurred.

Tears formed in the edges of her dark green orbs.

"Sh-Shige-nii... wh-what must I... d-do... to find you again..?"

Somewhere on the other edge was a space full of wrong ends and horrors not supposed to ever happen, as well as a living boy and a ghost, who led the boy through the darkness nearly shrouding him with black emptiness. But he clung on, and this Darkening didn't come close enough to him to completely corrupt him, as it nigh had. Up winding hallways and down stairs, through floorboards and into holes, until a single door stood out into the midst, gleaming and proving of something... different. As he neared, Shige-nii felt a burst of warmth inside of him, and this place, he saw, was right. Wherever he'd just been of that school: that was a messed up void. This was... more right... than whatever had happened prior. Perhaps... that pink girl wasn't dead. And the splat, too, and all of those corpses, and the thing that was attached to that humungous fin.

His fingers connected with the knob and sent a sudden warmth shocking to Mayu's own fingers, still desperately clinging onto the door. She prattled at the door with a new surge of determination and called out his name; and he heard her soft, squeaking cry full of sunshine and his name. Shige-nii, Sakutaro: whatever she wanted to call him, he let her. Even the elder name of Morishige: his last name, which he felt hadn't been used in quite a time, odd enough.

The tall boy in black met up with the shredded-clothed attire of someone he didn't recognize until he looked up from the rips and tears and saw those deep, thoughtful green orbs in tone with emotion and life in general. Recognition, she saw, sparkled past his glasses and down to the wispy green orbs he had, and they fell into an embrace that seemed unable to release again.

"Mayu—"

"I'm in love with you, Shige-nii!" she sobbed into him; stayed true to her word.

He nigh flinched for a moment, until his heart sprung with warmth and he silently realized, yes... all of the stopped-up denial stopped to matter and after the experience had shaken him so horridly he whispered, tightly clung to her, the shadows adorning his entire visible skin torn and vanished: "And I'm in love with you, Mayu."

Out of everything she could have stirred to, this happened as Dina and her headache lessened, and her eyes broke into silent tears. Nobody noticed her as she backed away and fled, like a wild creature, on all fours and everything, and nobody noticed as the spirit followed her, eventually reducing himself to crawl beside her and search her eyes and ask her to please see him, and no matter how long her ill, dizzy, tear-stained eyes looked wildly about, she saw nothing and she could not hear him.

 **Rupert: this is so cruel**

 **Me: I know, corpse party does that to you.  
**

 **Rupert: ...why...**

 **Dina: -still cannot hear him-**

 **Me: ;w;  
Oh GEEZ I'M GONNA HAVE A FINE AND DANDY TIME GOING TO SLEEP TONIGHT AFTER REVISING ALL OF THIS.  
OVEREMOTIONAL ALERT.**


	4. She was Filthy

**Me: Anyone have any idea what's going to happen next?**

 **Rupert: -staring in the direction Dina left off- A-ah... -gently shakes his head- Dina...**

 **Satoshi: I'm so lost right now...**

 **Me: haaaaah, you're always lost.**

 **Satoshi: -w- Well... my younger sister and all of my friends are gone. And you left off where anything honestly could've happened to me.**

 **Me: IT WAS THE GHOST GIRLS WASN'T IT. IT'S ALWAYS THE GHOST GIRLS.**

 **Rupert: do not mention those pests around me.**

 **Me: because one of them killed you**

 **Rupert: why are you acting so cynical?  
**

 **Me: I DON'T KNOW THIS STORY IS GETTING TO ME. HALP.**

Chapter Four: She was Filthy

Groaning, the boy who tried so hard to be kindly was buffeted by the slang of another male who appeared to be his size. Perhaps taller. "Who the heck are you, man?" was his first sentence. "I'm trying to figure out why the world turned to turd, dang it," soon became his second. "I know, I know, little boy: it must've been Rosie or Droplet or something; my friends are explosive," was his third. He ended his oh-so heroic upcoming with, "Naaaaaaah, it's proooobably Jkonna." Guy didn't even extend his hand to help Satoshi up or anything and sounded like he could just walk on by, but he didn't. He just stood there like a galumphing idiot who had nothing better to do, when obviously, listing what sounded more like three than two names, if Droplet was a name, he had something to look for here.

Soft, brown orbs slowly peeled open. A grunt. "Who... are you..?" he mumbled in his thick but sweet murmur.

"Me?" An olive-colored thumb pointed at slate-gray eyes. Satoshi blink and soon recognized a pattern: all of this boy had some sort of gray. His huge shirt, his more-fitting shorts down to his knees and a little further, his spikes of gray hair. In some world, he would have been considered a senior citizen, but his jubilation and lack of losing energy proved otherwise. In fact, he only looked two or more years older than the boy he'd knocked down.

"See, I can't tell you my name."

"Wh-what? Did you forget i—"

" _Not_ until you tell me _yours."_

Satoshi let out a small sigh, but was game. He didn't do much arguing, though the right people roused him. This boy seemed like one of the right people. "My name is Mochida Satoshi."

"Uh... does that make your first name or last name Mochiwhatsit because they both kinda sound like they'd work."

Seeing no other choice and being too much of a weak-minded pushover to argue, Satoshi explained the rules of his culture and that his surname was Mochida, first name Satoshi. "Ohhhh, okay! That makes no sense at all if we're talking about where I come from, but whatever, man. I guess, if we're in something your weirdo culture made up, that'd make me Nosh Dino, but ew, turd to using my orphanage lady's last name! I'm just Dino, now! I'm a free soul!" The more this kid rambled, the more Satoshi didn't know what to think of this guy. He was more than slightly strange, and he also chose to wear all gray. Like... he wanted to, not as if that sort of ragtag clothing article selection was a school uniform. Oh, he hoped not. But soon that fiery though lax voice picked up again, and Satoshi didn't know what to think. His white shirt crumpled with his attempting to get off the freaking ground, and his pants looked camouflage now with their new stains. "So... why're you just sitting there?"

A long, slow sigh on the fallen boy's part. "I fell."

"Well that's really freaking anticlimactic, don't you think? You're just all like 'I fell' and man, I don't do 'I fell's because they're dumb and stuff. From here on out, you were just attacked by a pack of hybrid vivosaurs, one gigantic with six fins and... another huge and brown, and another gold-butted who won't stop freaking dancing, one that's insane and keeps screaming the word 'lone,' and also one that's really depressed and gay." His gray orbs gleamed at the thought of it.

"...I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you're talking about..?" The longer he idly sat here after smacking skulls with this boy who didn't even react—he must've had a strong cranium—and simply continued with his useless chitchat, the more time was wasted. Satoshi had to find his friends: now. He couldn't wait here and do as he felt while there was a chance one lost soul was slipping away. He had to stop any of this from happening to his friends. In a weak attempt at diverting the boy's attention, he scrabbled for a name he'd heard prior that sounded a little important. "Um... are you still searching for Jikawna?" He winced at how awkwardly he'd said it.

But it seemed to work well enough. Recognition practically slapped boy in the face. Dino, right. "Ohhhhhh, tuuuurrrrrd... she's gonna kill meeeee when she finds me..." Dino groaned for a longer period of time and shook his head. "Jkonna's gonna fry me definitely. She'll be all like 'why you take so long diga-Din-Din I've been calling your name like for aaageeees.' Uuuuugggggggghhhhh..."

Unable to bear the thought of losing more time to this crazy kid, wasted on some gray-haired boy with fluffy spikes and olive-colored skin with the smirk and his strange taste for clothing that didn't even match up, the pushover quickly covered his ears and somersaulted a few misshapen times to keep Dino from looking at the ground and noticing his new buddy's departure, a swift and silent act in comparison to crawling and shuffling which miraculously worked, and once further enough out of sight, the dizzied Satoshi with a throbbing brain dropped out of his roll and sprinted down the hallways until he came upon a classroom and pulled out a shimmering, overly-bent key that shifted and clicked perfectly. He, with a new, calming air, gently stepped into the black tables, multifarious of full beakers, and singeing scent of charcoal that came with the room labeled **Science Lab**.

Soon as he entered, a voice erupted and shook him down to the bone. _"DIIIIGAAAAA-DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"_

Another followed suit.

" _Diiiiiiiiga-D-D...DIIIIIII-IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNAAAAAAAAAAHAAAHAAAAHHhhhhhhhh..."_

Intense pain clouded his mind at their erratic screeching of names so similar. Satoshi quickly realized that these two feminine voices both called similarly to similar names without even realizing and one of them he just about recognized. Satoshi slammed into the door but found it to have locked, and in his traumatized state he couldn't remove the bent, silvery key from his pocket. He slid to the ground and cowered on his own as the inhumane cries continued out for the same two people to save them, and it seemed neither would arrive anytime soon.

Their screams slipped from pain-shrouded begging to chokes full of gloppy creations gagging in their throats that prevented clean yelling, and slipped from that to a strange, choking screech that prevented them from true conveyance of how they felt but surely caused shivers to racket their spines and something that smelled horrid, that he could even catch whiffs of from where he stood, like some link from wherever these two girls were to where he had been forced into a corner on the ground had been forged and he couldn't escape the voices. They haunted him, taunted him, mocked him, and he felt like they'd bitten into him and drained all but his core essence of life which was why, even now, he still remained alive. It drove through his ears and begged for reason that soon curdled to insanity, and still the girls continued their subliminal shrieks that drowned him in the misery they were reduced to. All Satoshi begged for was an escape of this; he had anything but such release.

A bug-eyed corpse the color of Dino's clothing stared at him from its frigid position on top of a lab table, reduced-to-bone hands scraped and secured against such black-topped landing for its perched desires. It did not move, and made no intention to, but its eyeless sockets pinpointed, and looked to stare, at the boy succumbed to fear in the corner of the science lab of the strange not-so-little elementary school.

Somewhere that had come much further away, now, than the space with the boy frozen to the ground and the just-adult wandering and laughing at himself for each flawed trip, revealed the two females who, after crawling under and through the floorboards in the pulled, stained, burnt row of stairs, now pertained to shriek at the slightest motion or noise and had their faces scuffed roughly with what was most likely plumes of dirt. Though... it could have been anything. Perhaps not muck and grime that stained their reddened cheeks but wispy, white cobwebs, trailing up from their pale skin to their hair and dressing it in spindly layers of spider residue. Ayumi, slowly wobbling behind her wounded friend, blinked furiously and glared down at the accumulating stirrings of dust transported from the musty air to her once bright and lively yellow shirt, now crisscrossed in stains. Her dark, pleated skirt was in no better shape, though less ripped from the use of bandaging wounds.

There had once been a time in her life where she'd worry about what her family might think when they saw her again. When she... first came here; Ayumi somehow knew on a deep level in her soul that this was no ordinary curse, and she and her friends had been here for no ordinary allot of time, and Rosie and her friends and whomever else had come were here by no ordinary—or as ordinary as this hell got—means. She didn't think about trivial matters such as the people outside of her prison, just the ones she'd been brought here with. As far as the occultist bluenette was concerned, they were all the world she had left and, honestly, all that mattered now. And she needed that paper scrap back within her reach.

Sniffling, the girl raised a molded sleeve and rubbed at her nose, leaving a gray stripe underneath it. She sneezed, then mumbled, "Why is this school... so big?" not expecting or receiving an answer. If she recalled enough of the memories hanging loosely in her mind... there was the school itself. Three floors of a single elementary school. She knew there was more, too, and felt as if cold water had corded about her body and spluttered: the elementary school also had a pool. And... there was covered walkway to a second wing: same thing; three floors. And... there was something below the school too, she didn't know what, she just felt it. And this was all supposed to be, keep in mind, a tiny establishment for the little boys and the little girls.

Beneath the stairs was a sort of blackened road too. Where this would lead, she had not a clue, but Ayumi had nothing better than to follow it. Seeing how musty it was and how lost and cold she felt, she called Rosie—or Rose... or... wh-whatever—and the two huddled around the white, angelic touch of a newly-lit candle pulled out by the class rep herself. She did have quite a few on hand; she always did. Horror goodies, her friends called them. Once breathed on by the life of the flame, the duo moved on again, always in ample search of that Student ID, and the paper scrap secured inside. No plastic shined in either pair of eyes; all they could do was keep searching.

The minutes dragged like weights on Rosie's back, and soon those even expanded to accept what had to be at least an hour. Maybe two, she'd lost track and didn't count anyways, but it felt weird to be so close yet so far from the clutches of time. Oddly enough, her belly hadn't been feeling so out of shape, like breakfast time or whatever time it needed refilling hadn't come by yet. Still... she couldn't trust her stomach in a place like this. Her body might just be shocked by all that's happened and now unable to work and react like a normal body would was it not in Heavenly Host Elementary School. Coughing up dust and other lovely mites and junk in the air, the pink-haired girl with two bobs of strands arcing back stopped suddenly in her technically borrowed slippers and mumbled, "Why is it so far away? It'd hardly fallen into the crack and now we can't even find it after like an hour of just walking!"

"Maybe the earthquake rattled it up," offered her companion quietly, extending the candle-holding fingers snared together for a moment in a sort of stretch. Neither set of fingers released the shining beacon. "But we... but we have to find it... R-Rose... There's no way I'm leaving here without it." For a quick second, she lifted a hand and used the pale skin to beat at her pleated, dark blue skirt, where a fly or two had buzzed by and found a certain bloodstain on her leg the most enjoyable. It'd dripped down to her white, knee-high socks but she didn't care and held a grim, set face that gave its own chilly tone of determination.

The way her candle lit up that gelid expression gave Ayumi an edge to her, of sorts, like she knew what was going on before you did. Rosie didn't really like how the orange flames flickered and gave highlights to the blue bangs and bunched up twin tails and her deep-river blue eyes, but the warmth was substantial and fueled them more than anything else they had. "Okay, okay. I'm not saying I'm leaving, Ayuu, I'm just saying it's weird how long we've been here."

Rosie despised people who lied to her for any reason whatsoever, so she didn't do the act herself. If she felt a complaint jarred up in her throat, she'd let it out. Did the cute boy—more likely than not Dino—who sauntered by happen to be someone she really liked: oh, would she tell them. If the pink-haired girl felt scared out of her wits, she'd show it. Rosie didn't believe in bottling up her feelings for any reason out there or discarding one emotion to implant another. It was wrong, she felt deep inside of her; it was wrong. Therefore, all of the questionable things she could have said to her friend Ayuu may have not been the truth, but all that removed from her pink lips was what she felt inside of her.

Staring eerily out at the bitter world accompanying her, shivering under her clothes to bandages to wounds to skin down to the bone deep inside of her body, like treasures waiting for those freaky killer monster thingies in the school to come exhume all of that in her, just casually remove important bits of her body, mind their ugly souls: Rosie was freaking out more than slightly on the inside, and then she sneezed. Snot dribbled and after frantically wiping it away, sickly green spots remained. A notable thing about Rosie was how much she didn't like feeling this spilled with disgust and was repulsed by the sight of what she did see and what must've been all over in colorful, oozing polka-dots. She wanted to crumple into a filthy, once-pink ball and weep away her troubles but that only worked in some stories, and this was her life. Life, unfortunately, didn't work like that. At least right now it didn't. If she was alone with Dino and burst into tears about some terrible thing that happened to her and then he comforted her and she managed to kiss him—that was when it worked. This was a horror house. This was not the time. Her life had been at stake since the moment she fell down that hole.

"Oh, I sure do hope Grandpa's okay," she squeaked.

"He's fine," replied Ayumi, a little more cheerfully than she felt, "it's you we should be concerned about. I've been using strips of my clothes to try and supply you with bandaging, but those won't hold out forever. You'll... we'll both need medical attention."

And because she had not the slightest clue what that was, Rosie rose her head and stared, with magenta eyes, and asked what this medical attention meant.

Class rep of Kisaragi Academy Class 2-9 looked ready to strangle her. "You don't know schools _or_ medical—medical anything? I don't understand what kind of a place you come from!" Rosie mumbled about how quickly wounds healed and that her people had strong bodies. "B-but still! You look ready to tear apart, so fragile and pink and..." Deciding this was going nowhere, Ayumi measured out a small sigh and dished it into the cold air surrounding her. One of her hands removed permanently from the holding of their angelic candle and straddled one of Rosie's. "Medical attention are things like... hospitals, emergency centers. When someone's messed up, physically or mentally, as much as we've come, we go there and they seek us medication, clean us up, patch our messy selves, and we're all better. Like... like an infirmary."

"Ohhhh..." Rosie had seen the sign of such infirmary on the second floor of the school. She hadn't been up there since first meeting Ayumi, but she remembered enough of her patchy last few hours, and they were horrible: black scars gouged into her life. "Well, we don't have that. We heal on our own pretty well. Maybe not in here, but at home, we do. And if it's something serious, like... uh, comas, we usually just stay outside and get some fresh air and all that, and we get better eventually. It just happens." She offered a cheery smile, to which Ayumi stared back, flabbergasted. River-blue orbs blinked and struggled to understand something she simply couldn't.

It was then that Rosie, a pace in front, stepped on the ground and triggered something they'd all been holding their breath for, knowing at some point a reaction would occur. And here was that point. Shivering, shaking destruction thrust the pair of girls off their feet and doubled them over, coughing and choking, sooty and nearly lost in the black inkiness of the place underneath the stairs. Rosie's eyes caught on a few scattered words and the harder she looked, the longer she read, the soon she realized they must have been carved in the floor by something sharp and red, for thick, inky splotches of scarlet stood out in the grooves.

 **Yuki said it was a good idea. She said we'd be okay, because she's older, so she's nice and she tells us to hold our heads up, because we're younger and scared. But I don't even have a head now. And he doesn't have his body parts and she has no eyeball and it's really scary now. She cut us open, and then we died, and she found our bodies and she put them here. Left under the stairs. And it's also scary cuz no one goes under the stairs so we'd be stuck here.**

Magenta orbs widened and read on, and on, and on, of this single girl's tangent about her life and what she'd come to and how a little girl that killed her had dragged her and her friends' corpses over to this black nexus and deposited them here and they were trapped and their souls were stuck here and this nice lady that looked like a nurse had helped them, but her neck was twisted and she was scary too: and it seemed to this poor, headless girl that everything was scary. And at some point the messages began to take more effort to cling and write in, as the sharp utensil brandished and used grew thicker and harder and made choppier, all the redder strokes, and at some point the words faded to black ink on the ground. She'd never know where the ink came from, and she'd never want to. Startled, squealing, Rosie pummeled back on her rump and pushed back back back away from the words as they sunk in and chilled her to the bone and back.

 _Splort._

Her hand hit something sticky, and it almost didn't come back out. With a painstakingly sharp scream, like that of a poor little girl who'd just watched her parents die in front of her—something Rosie had seen happen to them, not on the outside thought but the inside—her eyes tore up and she fell hard to the ground and asked Dino to please help her. Of course, he never came, and Ayumi's cold, dusty, ice-pale fingers were the ones that dragged the suffering girl to safety. Gasping in breaths, Rosie's eyes trickled coldly and she shuddered next to her friend.

"I don't like it here." A cold, hard mumble that was swallowed up by the school in one breath of the girl's.

Ayumi didn't want this poor Rosie to go through more of this and, molding pinky's hands around the candle, firmly stood up. "Stay here. I'll go find my ID, Rose." An afterthought, a hand extended and gently patted the soft, puffy hairs of the girl before the class rep left her behind and scrounged through the rest of the mucky turmoil for her paper scrap. Rosie didn't budge for a time. All she'd breathed out in this school, none but cold, hard, tightly-packed truths, now lingered in the looming darkness. Tinges of colors like maroon, navy blue, violet, sunk in the backdrop of the black scene: none could stretch as far as the shadows, but it was a predominant hope of a sight. Rosie gently rose her sticking fingers from her right hand, temporarily placing all hold of the candle in her left, and splayed them in front of her face, tentatively letting out a breath and blowing at the goo on there. Feeling dizzy and blind, she couldn't even tell what color it was. Just saw the flecks of unsound dust in it and how hot, itchy, and altogether gelid at the same time the concoction felt on her skin.

 _Splat._ Her hand flung itself against the ground and, _skurrrsh, skuurrsshh,_ mixed with the items glued on. The porcelain pink mashed upon the sticky substance and with enough trial and effort, plus her overuse of attention on the subject, Rosie had enough of the strange, thick gel off of her hand to be satisfied. Assured that she'd live on, she brushed the hand against a puff of magenta skirt on her right-hand side and flickered it away, flexing her dainty hand and accepting again. Then it returned to the warm, waxy light wavering in front of her face and upholding it.

Hard, magenta orbs rising with her head, Rosie silently observed the hodgepodge of wood and dangling bits of flesh and overhanging sebum from above, giving off a thick, fatty aroma. Listless, unseeing pupils caught the light of the situation. Rosie felt numb; and so, she hardly reacted at the sight of three similarly-bound corpses that had decades on all of the other dead bodies she'd seen in this crazy place, all the tiny size of those kids Ayumi called elementary school students. In fact, they looked to be pretty important, too. The name, Yuki, that'd been scabbed onto the ground in the sharp object, looked to fit the tallest one, too. A girl. Short hair in twin bobs. One eye completely missing from her face. Yeah, she looked like a Yuki.

Just further along the musty confines of this strange place underneath the staircase, Ayumi tumbled onward, alone and without a candle. All logic approved, it'd have been easier on her to just pop out another of her wax goods, teeming of the multifarious sort in her pockets, alongside her two trusty matchboxes, but she didn't. Decided once she had her ID and the paper scrap locked inside, she'd just go find Rosie again and they could be on their... more or less merry old way once more. The class rep, smart as she was, no matter how little she listened to the adults at school—mainly the males—hadn't accounted for the burst of laughter on her heel.

High-pitched. Could be a girl. Or a little boy. Or a little girl. Or... two little girls, and one little boy. That sounded particularly correct, sound of peace in her mind. Which was strange, really, that she'd feel so secure in that odd number: hadn't, though it already seemed proof enough that she'd come here before? The portions of the school echoed in her mind: first wing—three floors, a second wing—three floors, a pool, however many traps and corridors that a tiny elementary school really didn't need, and of course... the abandoned bomb shelter below. Ayumi had all but ceased questioning how she knew these thing and duly took note. She had to've gone here prior. She... felt like her home and her school hadn't been visited by she and the eight she'd come here with in... a long time. A lot of things happened here, and they'd been stuck here for a long time. But this time, it felt different. It felt different with Rosie and the others she must've had with her: like that Dino boy.

Still, these were things the small schoolgirl knew, and the time to wonder her righteousness had been lost. The trembling footsteps of a weak-souled child had begun to follow her, and they were a lot closer than she'd intended. Ayumi squealed as a rush of cold air puffed over her back and those fingers grappled her shirt and a backward swatch of the yellow fabric was lost with a _thhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii_ tch. Cold air blew through the rip behind her, but Ayumi had no time to shudder. Words forced their way through the muscles in her jaw and out her mouth in a low, throbbing whisper:

"Don't look at them in the eye.  
"Don't look at them in the eye.  
"Don't look at them in the eye—  
 _"Don't look at them in the eye!"_

Her slippers made the pattering squeaks and rasps that bruited like rumors and called attention to her. The stomping shuffles of her pursuer's small feet in their dead shoes grew louder, and a scream shattered through her bones. Ayumi felt tears at the corners of her eyes.

"Don't let them touch you—  
"Don't let them _touch you—_

"Don't _let them touch you—  
"Don't let them touch you! DON'T! DON'T!"_

Steadily-swooning fear of the child doing exactly that roved her on, and sent the tears spiraling down her mucky cheeks. The rattling in her throat of strange words she'd certainly, clearly distilled and recalled a string of memories full of nothing but bloodstained truth splattering down on her, and Ayumi's eyes only widened, further showing off their watery depths now sprinkled with lines of tears and fears. As she ran, the wind caught at her and the holes in her clothes, so thoroughly battered it was like the school was warning her that she couldn't be a part of Kisaragi Academy any longer. Everything had been so peaceful just until then. Her life once again was thrust to hang on a line that could so easily drop and—she had a chance of _dying right now._

But my ID, voiced, proclaimed, cried, bellowed the words inside of her, but my ID—but my paper scrap. And but her paper scrap! This one connection to her friends—her loved ones—and surely they didn't always so finely acquit or stay along perfectly, but such was life, but such were those loved ones and family. She honestly felt that whatever family she'd once had was gone, by now, as was. Nothing stopped Ayumi from the thoughts gallantly stomping in her mind, stamping down rules and regulations that didn't count for her, didn't matter any longer. Catching the blocked-off end in front of her, Ayumi swerved and turned back, racing past the boy, not daring to look into those eyes of his.

A name summoned in her soul. Yoshizawa Ryou. Or, if part of Rosie's strange void, then perhaps Ryou Yoshizawa. Still, that strange child with the calm-looking long sleeve and shorts soon attacked by the stomach and intestines areas, which were now held together by long, filthy layers of blood the color of thin, winter breath. His entire body was. And also, he had no tongue. None of the corpses had any tongues in this entire school. None of the dead bodies. None of them. Not even the little girl who'd sat on Rosie and attacked the floors.

Strange, blinding wisps revolved around the child and his eyes, out of the pure peripheral vision Ayumi sported, speckled and twitched in a way she didn't want to find out—when she caught a gleam on his chest. On... his... chest. Pinned there. Nicely printed. Her school. **Kisaragi Academy**. Her class. **2-9**. Her name. **Shinozaki Ayumi**. Her. Her name tag was on that damn _kid_. He was wearing her name tag and showing off her paper scrap, which sat folded and secured inside of the plastic. Knowing she wasn't getting out of this easily, Ayumi's teeth gritted and she slipped back through the mess of floorboards with purple-tinged edges to where her back could lie flat against the end of the room. A foot lifted: and caught, against some rough edge or another. There were too many to count, and more than enough to supply her.

No choice but to move quickly. Her hands scaled as her toes ran higher and she grappled onto every and any support she could find. Unlike the spirits in some horror novels or the like, the ghost boy didn't move from his silent position below. He couldn't float and projectile himself up at her. He could climb, but he must've just figured she'd fall down eventually. Smart little elementary school boy. Then again, Ryou must've been killing students much older than him for the majority, and for a long time. These things had begun to come naturally for someone as such as he. The bluenette gagged from her position: tiny, pale girl up high, suspended by crummy lines of stained, stale wood alone.

The bangs cutting off her eyesight were shaken out, leaving a clearer view for what was to come. Bite-marks lined her lips for how hard she chewed at them and how terrified she'd come. Whether her small, caught legs shook from adrenaline for fear, Ayumi couldn't tell. The movement drove along like an epicenter and pushed at her blue, pleated skirt too. No matter how awkward her position came to, Ayumi had no choice but to let it pass when it did. If she let go of a hand to smooth it; oh, no, no she couldn't do that. No.

At the tips of the tall, gaping lines of space under the stairs, musty and brown and sticky and bloody and pockmarked with a rather large selection of bone and sinew and other grotesque human features, lubricant and secreted with fat, watery lines of sebum, releasing greasy, rotting stenches, Ayumi's eyes layered upon these inner body organs like they were her last hope. And... considering the plan she was about to uphold, she may as well have had this as her last hope.

Sucking in breaths, knowing how well any of them could be her final, face paling, fear for her life skyrocketing, the thought of what lie below her thickening in her throat, Ayumi swallowed and, feet locked in place as sure as she struggled for, a hand propelled and knocked some of that debris downward. It rained down upon the boy and, sure as gold, batted at what he wore on his shirt, tying at her Student ID with her beloved paper scrap in it, until it has almost torn out. The blackness in the air thickened, and it became coarse and hard to breathe. Ayumi panted and panted and panted for breath. Her head swam. Images blanked in and out of her submerged within the slimy, overflowing tub of a pool, rainwater and tinges of green aqua swirling about her until something man-made _THUNKED_ and the drain began spluttering and she was drawn in, and she was stuck, and she was killed. It all flashed before her eyes as the air flickered around her, wrapping her up and causing her head to pound madly. Ayumi knocked more of the discarded human body parts and felt her hand stick with some nasty, succulent, meaty things, but she didn't look and whimpering, shuddering up her throat, coughing and begging for air, swallowing and tearing up all over again, she fell from her perch as well and with a slam locked to her feet knocked with the boy who was so stunned he didn't move for a direct instant that let her hand hit her hung-tight ID and give her the energy to _run like hell._

 _Splatsplatsplatsplatsplat—_ then the released bits of bodies weren't walked on anymore and it went to— _tap tap tap splort taptapsplorttaptaptaptaptaptapsplorttaptaptap._ She nearly ran through the flames of the candle, one hand so secured upon her ID that it creaked dangerously with the pressure: the bones in her fingers, not the plastic it concealed. Draping one arm over Rosie, suddenly beginning to feel the itches and scabs of the wood as it'd splintered over her open back in her climb, Ayumi tugged her listless friend and, seeing the black smoke, hearing the chime of the boy farther behind and his slow trudging within the bloody masses, she stood.

At the time, Ayumi didn't pertain the strength to take back her candle, too. When locked up in these sorts of hells, some trusts that were never given before at such a small, new, fragile friendship were planted now, and Rosie's right hand grasped the warm, drooping wax firmly, her other taking Ayumi's shivering right with her left holding the ID. Somehow or another, they found their way back to the front of the stairs in a new timing and could hardly believe their luck that the loose board they'd left out their prior was completely missing from sight, the gap to the stairway completely open for anyone else to use or see. Emerging far more filthy than the average corpses resting on the ground, hacking up dust, rubbing away grime, stained and ripped in flesh and cloth each, only thankful to be alive, two females who were both well-known for hating to be covered in filth collapsed onto the ground without another mumble.

They burst into a stream of hot, thankful tears that it was over, and showered in cold, new ones that they still had so much more to go through before it truly ended.

On grounds with a metallic-silvery coloring, past a covered walkway from the first wing, a second had emerged, and someone stonily took steps through their new discovery. Old, rickety, feeling like one of the corpses only come back to life, feeling practically like one, the soul had slipped into a new space they had never seen before. Their companions from prior were not to be found, and this had become their new spot in the school to stay. It looked... different from the first. First of all, the steps to the third and second floors were in one long, spiraling staircase, and another was on the other side, keeping everything much more even and flat and easy to maneuver through, even for someone as crusted as they.

By crusted, they meant the blood and snot coalesced across their body in frightening mixtures of patterns and color, and the gait they had, this slow, slithering walk, that kept others watching it as it moved. In all honesty, it was not that bad of a look, understandable after what it had gone through. Though it was how it did nothing about these disturbing attachments, not even stopping in the covered walkway, where the rainwater was and all of it and the storm, to wash off. Shameless, perchance. Shameless.

Eyes that could hardly move creaked upward and caught sight of something moving in front of it. They looked to be the same height, perchance, when the pale head rose and caught full sight of this girl who soon turned around to face her back. Short—like she—but younger as well by a good few years, with short clips of pretty, autumn-brown hair kept somewhat-tidier by a plastic pink headband on her little head. A deep blue dress of sorts draped down her entire body and a cute little pink bow situated on the midst of it, where a white cuff at the collarbone area met blue and was lost to it. The girl rose her somewhat-sunbathed face and wide, sky-blue eyes and smiled slightly. Her sunny yellow slippers on her feet bounced against the ground nervously.

"H-hi there..." she introduced. "I-I'm Mochida Yuka! Who are you?"

For a moment, lightning flashed outdoors and sent the much younger girl into a frozen stance, to which the second reached out a deathly pale hand and placed it on her shoulder. She did not smile, merely nodded. Waves of orange hair spilled out, caught with bits of silver, which were hard to see when much of her was dyed such a red. "I am Dina." And that was that.

A tall shadow caved across the flooring and a much taller male appeared from round the corner. He had small, dark, piercing orbs, narrowed and pointed directly at the two girls. Shorter black locks of hair topped his head and he wore a small, emotion-pressed smile. A purple coat sat disheveled down his large right shoulder and he had on a white undershirt that was partly opened and unbuttoned both on the front and the sleeves. His dark pants, on one side, were draped by a silver chain. Dina blinked sourly at the clomp of his slippers. Lemony laughter, reduced to hiccuping giggles, sounded from her.

She did not know why. She just felt a need to laugh. Shaking herself slowly, her eyes wandered upon this tall, tall man quietly. "And I'm Kizami Yuuya," he spoke in a dark, alluring whisper that at the same time assured safety, did she choose to stick with these interesting people.

Not knowing what to say, Dina mumbled, "D-do you know who... Shige-nii or Mayu are?" She could not remember last names, and only knew the one of Mayu as it was. To the side of the towering Kizami man—or would he be Yuuya?—yes, she believed, he would have been Yuuya, was her conversation with Mayu correct in their standards—stood the little... Yuka. Her eyes sparked suddenly, like the names fit in somewhere, but where, she did not remember. Perhaps she was a little sibling to one of the friends Mayu and Shige-nii had? It hurt to think about them; Dina stopped.

Something glittered in the pocket of Yuuya. In his pants, where his pale right hand lingered. It looked long and slim and... cutting. Like a... vivosaur tooth. A weapon, surely. Perhaps they could kill the ghost children? It did not matter, either way. Nothing mattered. Yuuya seemed to find her funny-looking, and his gaze continued to poke and prod her way. Maybe he did that to all of the people he first met, scrutinizing them so vividly. He, himself, seemed to find interest in her. Yuka, however, bursting with cheer and emotion, garnered not so much attention now. "We're looking for all of my friends right now! I woke up here... by, um, Mister Kizami, so we decided that I'd help him look for his friends and he'll help me look for mine. There's eight of them, but he said that's okay. Are you looking for any friends?" Yuka, naïve and curious, watched with her big, blue eyes.

"Um..." Rupert was dead. "I..." Rupert was dead. "I am..." _Rupert was dead, Dina, who else did she have to possibly consider looking for?_ "There are t-two I know are here... and... I-I believe a few others... a-as well..." Torn, Trikko... The other souls that the ghost had told her about. If.. these people... were not so important—why did he not mention them? He had said the alive ones. New blood, of a sort. Oh, she did not remember. Her brain—all of her, really—was dull with illness and her nose had become too stuffy and clogged to continue dripping snot. The blood from her fall and every other clumsy fall she had taken prior patterned her like a design. She ached. She wanted to die and find Rupert, but she could not. She could... not... Dina felt nothing. Dina simply felt nothing, and of course Yuuya found it interesting, that this girl had no emotion at all within her.

"She's gonna help us look for everyone, right?" Yuka and her big, sky-blue orbs attached onto the boy next to her. She trusted him. Dina felt nothing and could not confirm who she trusted at the moment.

Yuuya replied smoothly with, "Yes, she may accompany us." A dangerous glint in that eye. Head thick with whatever sickness she had caught, more possibly with snot dangling inside of her skull and causing her thoughts to worsen already, Dina nodded slightly. It hurt to think about it; thus she did not think much right now. Emotions inside of her had been dulled: at what cost she would find out later, she felt. Unless she died before that. She wanted to die and stay with Rupert... but she had nary the competence to kill herself and had to wait naturally for the time to come.

So they set off in the halls of this second wing with the silvery lining and the altogether new-looking interior, like it had been built a few years after the elementary school had been. And perhaps it had been. Sighting with a stray look that Kizami had ruffled clothes as well but the jacket over his shoulder was particularly in good condition, Dina thought of sporting the look too, if it could keep her dear coat safer. But the thought of taking it off, even for a moment, repulsed her.

As the time wore on, and their slow, steady gait continued, the classrooms all thoroughly examined with nothing out or the ordinary except for this interesting thing called a music room lined with funny instruments that, when Dina touched one, would let out a hoarse tune alone, until her heart jabbed and she stopped because emotion messed with her and for now she just wanted to avoid it, they ended at the front of their second wing quietly with not quite a trace of what had happened. The small trio determined to do another round trip, try again, see if they found anything new. In fact, on the third floor, a small door opened to reveal the room of the principal—whom she learned was the... the king of a school—and his office, the interior found to be trashed with papers and smudges and charms that caught the eye of Yuka, who slowly wrapped around and pocketed a few items she saw worthy into her purse, but nothing else was of interest. Any openings had been thoroughly nailed down in paper and wood. How the door had not opened prior was a mystery, but as the two shorter girls turned around to leave back down the turquoise-tinged steps something came hard on their backs.

The wind caught in Dina and her chest, knocking her over easily, but little brown-haired Yuka, near the railing, grabbed with all her might as the foot of a large man—no, that was not a large man, just Yuuya—pounced at her and bowled her over again. His eyes suggested a tone he did not whisper: Yuuya was bored of the lack of corpses—there had been a meager number of minor starvation deaths that he did not find interesting—and now he was hacking, kicking, down at Yuka, who spilled under the railing and fell down another landing with a _sprraaaCK._ Suddenly seeing as his leg went up and over the railing to jump her, Dina felt her limbs moving before she realized it and had surged against the tall male and felt a wave of thick, hot blood pump down her throat as she came in contact and both shoved against the door of the principal.

He was whispering something erratically in breaths, like the slam from little Dina—who did happen to be a fossil fighter and it looked like the people of her world were a little tougher than these others, as her cuts from her falls did close, just the blood was still there, already sealed tight—had hurt him. It might have, when the slim, silvery item came out and a word clicked: weapon. Knife. He was bored, and this was what Yuuya found fun. His hulking figure, pushed down on Dina and the cold bite of iron to her shoulder came as a sudden wake like water in a jump through a lake and her breath billowed out with the _splort_ of red from her wound that rather framed Yuuya in a way he seemed to like.

"Your reactions are interesting... but you're not screaming for your life. It's like you _want_ me to kill you, or you don't care... and oh... I like that... But right now, I want to hear you scream. And if you won't..." Yuka will, his silent words he did not even have to say. No reason, pure emotion, flooded this strange man and his narrowed, dark orbs pinned for the girl with a rushing loss of safety and new fear deep inside of her, crying out for her big brother, as she said it. Dina... quietly decided something.

Yuka... knew Mayu and Shige-nii... She was a part of that sort of family they had. And Dina wanted to help them...

But nonetheless, Yuka would regain her breath eventually and be able to flee if Dina stood in the way of the tall, creepy male. She realized, quietly, with a small smile to herself, that she had been deciding a lot of things lately. To help Mayu. To try to live a little longer. Then to stay alive until she was killed by something here. Now, to help Yuka. And... perhaps she could be killed in the process of this, and try to find Rupert again. He would be happy to know that she had died saving someone else... and that she still continued to try, in the least. But perhaps he would not like to see the emotionless glint in her eye, the struggles she faced... until it could all come back to her...

Dina shook her head and as that boy tried to scale the bumpy line of wood to her right again she quietly took hold on one of his legs, and tugged a little, sending him back where he started. Not really a smirk or a leer, but a begrudging grin nonetheless that should have shocked her into fear, did she still feel it, Yuuya abruptly stood and leaned in tightly, pressing his forehead against Dina and breathing on her face. "Have it your way." The grin, slippery and wide, only grew as the knife in his hand of cold metal gently pressed against her neck and he asked her to not move, surprised at how limp and still Dina went.

She did not know what this strange boy had in plan for her, but the tension in the air locked her up tight, as well as the lack of emotion for her to shiver. Somewhere below, Yuka, able to recollect her breath and stand gingerly, caught eye of Dina, trapped in a strange sort of position from the towering male and almost voiced a question, but a sudden emotion lurched in the auburn orbs looking down at her: _go._

And Yuka did.

It was the last memory, seeing the tiny, young child splitting down the halls, her blue dress flowing about her and her headband blinking in the half-light over and around the rings of decaying wood, that Dina would have full collection of. She never learned what ever had gone on in that catch of time, only that it ended with the male on the ground, his body cut and torn in pieces and Dina further smeared in the red. The knife... She did not see it anywhere when she came to.

Her mind flickered in and out of recognition. She could not feel what was going on or tell what she did or what had happened, and everything became a whitewashed blur where her eyes caught and she looked healthy enough somewhere but she was not at all in understanding of whatever was going on in her life or even the events happening in front of her face. She sneezed quite often and it worsened her headache, and her gait had compressed and gone even slower, and that was all she knew.

Dina did not realize she had killed someone; Dina did not feel much of anything now.

 **Me: Hey Rupert**

 **Rupert: do not get me into this**

 **Me: Rupert, what just happened**

 **Rupert: ...my sweet Dina is losing herself. -sighs quietly- How... selfish of me...**

 **Me: ;w; Aww...**


	5. II: He was Fretful

**Me: Do any of you feel better now?**

 **Rupert: no**

 **Dino: I GOT ONE SHOWING, MAN. I WANT TO SEE MYSELF MORE.**

 **Me: … ewe You technically got two.**

 **Dino: I WANT MORE! WHY DOES DINA GET IT ALL?**

 **Dina: owo … I... do n-not know if you w-would like... t-to go through that...**

 **Dino: Oh. Oh no. I would.**

 **Me: If you shush and let me continue writing, maybe you'll see yourself show up.  
Oh, by the way to our kind readers! :3 As you can see, we have different arcs of the story. There are... five. Arc I was the last four chapters, and now we're moving onto Arc II. You'll see why I have those set up soon... x3 But know that they won't be the same lengths~**

Corpse Party: Broken Bones: Bloody Bonds II

Chapter Five: He was Fretful

 _Boom._ The sound of his boots rising and hitting against what would prolly be wood. If his guess was accurate enough. Being just about an adult in the age frames of your world taught you wisdom that the youngsters he knew so well wouldn't believe, mostly around things that didn't have to do with wood, but this time did happen to involve such substance. Raising a knee-high boot again and slapping the brown surface against the wall directly in front of him, feeling the tones of reverberation spill on him like a bucket of grease and lock all throughout him, the man tucked into place quietly, quaintly observed that he was trapped in what looked to be a wooden prison with the shelving and design of a cabinet. Prolly a locked cabinet. More likely than not: a locked cabinet.

Having nothing better to do, Joe Wildwest shifted in his new, awkward position and attempted to situate himself. Surprisingly for a man his size—pridefully tall certainly didn't come without a weight to bear—the awkward, limp wood nestled under his seat seemed able to hold him and hold him good. Tentatively going for another kick, his left leg spread out. _Boom, boom boom._ Nothing. No sense of giving way. Joe wracked his brains, trying to figure out why in tarnation he'd be locked up in such a strong cabinet that could've held three of him for all he could tell, when he recalled that he'd gotten up in the middle of the night randomly and decided to look out at the stars. So he'd gotten out of bed, putting on his clothes and whatnot, sure he wasn't going to fall back asleep anytime soon—stargazing took his breath and time away—and saddled up and out. Out of his room and into the clearing outside, on the rocks before a shoreline and looked out at the night.

Right. Then some freak tsunami or earthquake sucked his feet out from under him and Joe stopped his aloof gazing. Stricken with more curiosity than panic, a large, fair hand patted at his head and found that his thick, monster-faced hat of coarse, brown material still sat and swamped his head. Orange curls framed from it and, shaking such head, squeezing his chocolate brown eyes shut in a moment of curious acquiesce, he chuckled softly to himself. "Joe, what kinda barrel'o vivos have we stumbled into this time?" His voice, a thicket of the western sea and as well a sun-bleached humor, still held an air of peace. He didn't really know where he was or what might've happened to him, and altogether held a cool, calm composure. Period. Pretty much. Then he got a little bit emotional. The slightest mixture of emotions at the rarest of occasions. Wasn't quite the shower of feelings, was he.

Raising one of his long hands and pressing its warmth-bleating surface against the cabinet allowed an array of dust to stick to him. "Well I'll be durned," he muttered off to himself, "what kinda dust bowl have I stumbled into?" A meager attempt at a joke he didn't even notice until moments after making it, Joe let out another short bark of laughter and pressed his boot against the cabinet. "I don't wanna bust up a perfectly-fine shelving object... but if it's either that or become dust vivosaur chow... Looks like I might as well."

 _WHAM!_

Joe wasn't particularly strong, but he had a good eye at weak points and saw a chink in some glass or another. Plus his boots had sharp spurs on the end and he'd aimed their spiny edges right at the glass in the door. He could've sworn the dang thing would've opened: and did it? No, it stayed locked shut, didn't even give a moment of caving. Not letting himself be defeated so easily though slightly confuzzled, Joe let out a short puff of air and narrowed his chocolate orbs into slices. "I'll be mighty fine durned what happened righ'ere." His hand slunk for his belt, where a loop of rope, sharp and ready—a lasso—lie waiting, whenever he needed it. And sometimes, he did. Not often, but you never know, where he came from. You'd never know. Testily, the adult squeezed his useful utensil and wondered why, if he'd been brought here, his captor or captors hadn't taken something like that. As well, his unreasonably large, brown coat that most people back in his day coveted for sat around his shoulders as it did when he'd arrived, come to conscious terms in such cabinet.

He had not a clue what kind of party pit he'd stumbled into, and as the seconds wore on, Joe grew less sure he was so keen on finding out. But there wasn't much to do right now other than get out of this freaking cabinet, so he may as well try t—

A face splayed smushed and pulsating against the glass from the other side.

"Dear Igno, what is wrong with that poor thing?" he muttered, and, not sure what else to do, raised a hesitant finger and tapped at the glass where the gray face was plastered. The orbs stayed their hollow black coloring, but her lips curled and teased, biting at where they should have pinpricked him, had the clear coating not been there. All the same, red dots showed on his finger and Joe hastily drew it back. "Strange," was all he had to say at the moment. Perhaps that girl knew how to get out of the cabinet? A sudden display of light and thunder shattered outside, and the next chance he looked, Joe saw that the little girl thing had gone.

Giggling of a high-pitched child that brought the orange-haired, pale face of someone he knew quite well—Dina—though it couldn't be her, cut into his ears. Cold chills creeped into Joe's heart and he quietly accepted that whatever was about to happen would stick with him for a long time, whether it be from the lunacy or the fear in the moment. Staring into that little girl's gray face made him decide on his own that something was about to go down... something he probably wasn't going to enjoy. Rubbing at his just-woken orbs and later to his face, shaking his head, stretching his jean-covered legs and giving a melancholic observation to his shirt that was in a brown-and-yellow design reminding him of his home, and he tensed.

There was no way he'd get out of this cabinet by himself. His leg still throbbed from his impact, and with not even a scratch whatsoever to spare him, he surely wouldn't try that little atrocity again.

Sitting there in the dark with the rain pouring down somewhere, then came the footsteps. Thick, clomping boots going _skissshhh, skkiiiiisshh, ssskiish,_ marching in their own little song and with a rhythm that didn't keep on going and would erratically stop. And something metallic dragged on the ground after every few steps of his. The sound of it arriving would go _reeeeeeeeeeeeek... reeeeeeeeeeeeek..._ Joe didn't know what to feel about this hassle of his but already knew deep inside of him that he better stay quiet right now. To secure it not happening, a hand blanketed his mouth, and he waited in the silence of the room, spent locked in a cabinet of all things. How he didn't notice it before was a mystery, but the staggering, heated scent of an inscrutable but foul item clogged and gagged him and tore at his mind. Joe shook his head and wondered what in ol' tarnation was going on with this place.

 _Skish, skish... skiiishh...  
Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeekk...  
_ _Skiishhhh...  
_ _Reeeee—reeeeeekkk..._

Joe tensed again, ready for action, as he detected that those noises had most certainly passed into the room his cabinet sat so strong in. Stuck in the moment, he dwelt on it, on that constant refute of those footsteps on more wooden boards, crooked and creaking, and the squeal of hard, metal-hinted material on the floor after, being dragged and fractured into his head. Blinking, more squinting, Joe's heartbeat skipped and he felt that this noise was purposely coming for he, and he alone. That little girl... perhaps she had something to do with it. Wanted to see what'd happen to him in this situation. Joe gritted his teeth with a creaking glint of bone on bone in his maw, feeling muscles flex and heart throbbing in his chest like it wanted release. He shook himself: all focus waned onto the glass, waiting for it to crack and that noise reeeeeking on the ground to fall on it and release him.

Whatever was planned for him, the pardner wasn't letting it hurt him as much as he could. He had enough smarts and reflexes to feel reasonably confident in himself, when the shadow came and draped across somewhere to his left side and the door _crrreeeeeeeeeeeaaaaked_ open with the splintering shatter of wood and something massive spilled through, easily massing and bubbling over Joe who suddenly felt puny and insignificant. The thing dragging on the ground was secured in sagging, gray flesh of fingers and it had a long, thin, black handle that might've shined had it not such a streak of grime and something red he didn't mention to himself on as well. A dark mark connected at the bottom that made the dragging. Besides shady edges, Joe couldn't tell much more about this monster-like thug, other than the bright red eyes.

Red like the stain on the hammer. Red like... He gulped quietly to himself. Red like blood. He hadn't quite expected seeing something like that in this area. Then again, Joe shouldn't have felt so surprised: heck, he was locked in a wooden cabinet like supplies for this wooden chamber. Obviously there was something off here. But just sighting the shadow and catching the faint scent of gooey flesh on him as well as those beady, scarlet orbs penetrating him straight through the soul: dominant shivers creeped up his spine, stronger than ones he'd felt in a good, long time. The last ones he'd felt this strong were from ghost stories some years ago with other pards of his. This placing he'd come to: Joe felt uneasy.

But he tensed as the hulking figure did and something, with a captivating _whoosh_ , smacked straight through and bludgeoned in the wood, spotting a knotted hole on the right side. Joe... would have to go around the man and whatever else had to be in the room to escape to the door on the left side; but an exit was better than being locked. Not letting go at this blinding, light-colored streak of pure luck, the adult curled up and punched himself through the hole as the thing—a massive, blackened sledgehammer with bloody fingerprints of stains on it—came cracking down. Had he placed his fair hand on top of the cabinet to steady himself out, that hand would not longer exist. As was, his hat fluttered off of his head but Joe didn't feel like losing it so he snagged the sucker and made off past the hulking thing with the brown, floppy head-wear secure in one clenching hand.

Because it might help in the long run, he slammed the paper-thin door in place and, taking a quick glance to and fro his surroundings, shrugged, darting off a hard right, choosing it on pure instinct and hoping the soupy dark hallway swallowing him up now hadn't shaded off some putrid trap or wall or something. Durn, the creepy hulking thing chasing him could _run._ Like he'd been holding back the entire time, that guy slipped and slid and darted relatively well though clumsily down the halls. Puffing and huffing, Joe could hear those black footprints ceasing in on him when in a burst of idiocy he stumbled and tripped and fell hard down a hole, bursting into the floors below in a panting mess and stumbling a quick somersault, glancing and catching the opening to a staircase straight in front of him and hearing the _THONK THONK THONK_ of the big shadow thing directly above him. Joe ducked to his left.

His blood began to run cold and he wasn't sure how long he was gonna make it in a sticky situation like this. Sure, he was relatively young, especially in comparison to how old people in his world get, but some people didn't have boundless streaks of energy, and he was one of them. Panting, wheezing, panting, stumbling, the pard fled into another line of twisting stairs and streaked up and across the wooden floorboards, nigh falling down another hole. He wheezed hard and bad and decided the next moment he got he was gonna sit down and take a break. Joe was not built for these sorts of stunts. It was then he realized he hadn't even questioned what was going on and why a big shadow was chasing him around.

Well, no time for questions. If he stopped to think about it, he'd get killed off faster than he could open his mouth to voice his disapprove for this. Suddenly his eyes flashed to the little girl with the orange-and-silvery hair with the pale face and wondered if she was here too. Joe had no idea. It was entirely possible, for all he knew, though that didn't even make sense—

Something blurry fell back behind his vision and, locking eyes with some dark, narrow orbs, gasped and spluttered for him to run. At first the boy stood there, staring, holding a strong disproving gesture for the man, as far as holding a delinquent air about him, but catching that the guy was freezing up, panting, and dead serious, he shrugged. Joe noticed that he carried a sort of stuffed vivosaur in his arms that was brown and looked pretty adorable until he caught eye with the purple orbs and realized it was a vivosaur, not a harmless plush.

Somewhere or another, the ground began a horrid concoction of shaking, but the boys ran and the creature silently stayed silent and the air grew light like the monster thing wasn't there anymore. At some point, Joe ran into a dead end in front of a place toward another set of stairs, but these all were filled with short booths—desks, he was pretty sure they'd been called—and he and the blonde kid sank to the floor, faces red and breaths haggard.

"I... think you just..." A gasp of breath. "Saved my life..."

 _Ch-cheerio!_ cried the smaller, brown one. _Good lad, I believe we owe you! I know even not your name, but Iggy—_

"I didn't agree to that name!" rapidly yelled out the boy like he wasn't used to hearing vivosaurs talk as they did.

 _A-ah... I know, but I told you that it helped me to call you by one of my friend's names, and you kind of remind me of Iggy? Plus, you said you liked the name more than Thomas, um, so... Yeah. You allowed me to, and I thank you, lad. So um sir... Yes, thank you, oh, pip pip! Cheerio! Thank you, old bean, for saving our lives! I would disdain at dying without Dino and Droplet! I cannot die... I cannot die; I must find them and we must reunite, you see..._

Joe, recognizing that the blonde boy whose height slightly rivaled his own—minus the floppy hat he soon re-donned—was... apparently in debt to him and seemed to have a nice face enough, blinked slowly. He didn't darn know what to say to these folks, so in the end he took the easy route. _Why, I'll be durned, shrunken seismo. I'm sure we'll find you yer friends soon. We won't let you die, pard~_

"What the hell," grunted the blonde boy, his dark orbs penetrating and confused. "What the hell was that?" Delinquent kid meant more than the situation: he meant everything.

"Oh. So you really don't know what vivosaurs are, then?" He was dumbfounded. How did someone not? They came from a world where everyone knew about those things, and to see this strange delinquent-looking boy not... It was plain weird. Never before had a soul looked so confuzzled about this sort of scene. "I better try to help ye understand, then...

"It's... relatively simple. So we have these things called vivosaurs, which are kinda like pets but mostly pardners, not really pets at all. And they're... sort of... pets to a kind of master, would it be..?" He didn't know what he was saying. Just trying to grope for reason. The delinquent kid stared at him through his dull, dark, but piercing orbs and... nope. Nope. He didn't get it. Joe mustered a sigh and said, "He's a person too. Just a different race of species. Also they speak telepathically because I dunno." This, at least, seemed to go through to the blonde well enough.

From what the pard saw, it looked like it. He shrugged. "Close enough, I suppose." For the first time since their altogether rushed and awkward encounter, the older boy took a stronger glance at this kid's clothing. He wore a detrimental outfit that not at all looked to suit him, with the starched, black jacket and pants. The white shirt underneath, partly unbuttoned, would've fit him a little more, but the scarlet shirt underneath that layer would've suited the boy best, for all he knew. The kid just seemed like a wild card, and wild cards had a fine-looking show in red. "Well, I suppose you'll be joining Pippy and me from here on out. So... I'm Kishinuma. Kishinuma Yoshiki. Don't call me Iggy or—goddammit, I'll hurt you." He had a strong sort of accent that rippled in Joe's heart when he heard it flesh out fully.

"And it appears we shall, pards," added the westerner. "M'name's Joe Wildwest. Pleased ta meet'cha, boys. Either of you understand what's going on round here, or is this just me, or is this... nah, it doesn't look very new." As he spoke, the crinkling of floorboards beneath his flashy, brown boots displayed the hallway's youth.

And last, the brown one spoke up. A seismo—long neck and long tail, smaller body with tiny nubs of limbs. He had a purple underbelly and purple eyes and looked like the most nonviolent thing he'd ever laid eyes on. No, not true... Dina was a little less violent. Shaking his curls of orange hair, Joe nodded for the little thing to go on. _Call me Pippy, cheerio. I've seem to've lost Dino, who happens to be my master and/or friend and/or Bond... as well as another vivosaur of his, a krona by the chipper name of Droplet. But lads, she has a bite! Do not underestimate her!_ Cute little seismo, the thing was. Joe smirked to himself slightly on the thought. The brownie with his purple highlights reminded him of his own vivosaurs back from home, and a notion bludgeoned him that he had not a clue what may have become of his own scaled friends the time he'd been dispersed and fallen through the cracks in the ground, thus leading to his demise in the cabinet in the room with the man and his hammer and that creepy little girl.

Against all odds, he was breathing and living particularly well alongside the blonde delinquent kid—Kishinuma, right—and the shrunken seismo, whose long, mud-brown neck quaked strongly and displayed his fears like he'd worn it, like a frilly, pink dress adorned him. He had a kid friend back at home who wore dresses, and he had no shame over it. Did it first for a friend, then grew into it. The pard couldn't even remember the last time that boy'd worn something besides a dress.

But he didn't seem to be in this cramped corner, moseyed up against stubborn flecks of cracked and chipped and otherwise malformed monsters of wood, all from a peaceful being called oak. Only humans, he vouched, could make something as gentle and kind as oak trees look this ugly. Course, enough people from his world recognized this so that the ones that didn't could easily be identified and put out of the way of harming the world. Some island or another had a snug enough jail. Joe vaguely remembered a fragmented thought carrying a story of the police station that gave out carrot sandwiches to the prisoners entitled to the chained bars from behind.

Joe shook his head, softly, sternly, trying to throw off old memories. At the moment, nothing from his past truly mattered: just that if anyone he could recognize may have been sucked into this black void, he should help them. "Hey... HEEEEeeeeeeeey! You, look at me." The delinquent kid helped shake things up and anchored his focus back to the problem.

Dark blue met chocolatey brown as their gazes collided. Pippy shifted, his brown paws slithering to the side, his head bobbing and following the threads of conversation chipped in as the voices exchanged, collected as vines growing from the roots of the one blonde-haired Kishinuma Yoshiki. His hard, throaty voice asked, "You're an adult, right? So... you have any idea what the hell we're doing in this abandoned school place..? I mean, little kids should get taught here... and yet the air's feeling thick, and you told us to run from something dark and bad... Damn, I don't understand."

"Pard, I doubt anyone'd expect ya to feel comferterble in yer own skin right now, with this creepy air. Like we shouldn't belong here'r somethin'..." Shaking his head, the orange-haired adult—as that he was—tittered quietly. He didn't get it either, Kishinuma. In that single instant where his fair-colored lips had popped opened and spoke, Joe knew he had two options with this kid: he could chastise him for the cursing, and the attitude, and his strange, simply unruly manner; or he could live with it and let the kid go. Joe felt this boy was strong, stronger than he, and though he looked blunt and rugged on the outside, there had to be something more with him: he couldn't be that plain. It didn't... work like that. Why else would this tall, fairly-tanned kid help poor Pippy with this traumatizing place?

"Yeah... it's messed up. I have to find everyone else that came with me... I'll go crazy or something if I don't, and I'll just keep looking, and looking..." Tall, young, blonde Kishinuma shook his head, face engraved and dizzied with the stress that must've been puncturing his insides, all the way down to his soul. Personally, Joe didn't even know who might be down here, but seeing little Pippy the long-necked seismo in this strange place, meaning that others somehow... possibly related to him might be lurking in these dangerous corners: anything was plausible. Heck... his own vivosaurs might be hidden around somewhere. Though he doubted it.

In response to Kishinuma's words, Joe murmured, "I chanced upon this school place by chance, with the reading and learning..." He picked off from the meager hints the blonde had given easily. Hmm. Joe could do that on topics that struck him well enough. Weird. "All'a that. I dunno... there was this pit, I fell into it, and now I'm here." Then it struck him; something else, having done with the brown creature to his side. Even though he knew it'd freak out Kishinuma, he should get used to it. This was an entire and significant piece of the pard's life, and Pippy's as well. Might try to learn about the telepathic link some. _Pippy, m'friend... you'd said that the human with you and one of his other vivosaurs fell in with you?_

 _I... um... y-yeah! P-pretty much, sire..._

 _I'd appreciate it if you didn't call me sire, Pippy. Joe'll be fine._

The black-clad student helping form their awkward triangle in the hallway attempted his own butt-in and use of the telepathy link of sorts. Or at least how vivosaurs communicated; kid didn't know which. _Joe, you're the first adult I've ever met that didn't want me to call him by mister and their last name. You're weird._

 _Mister Wildwest?_ A guffaw, followed by a thick, western smirk and foggy eyes. _I can't deal with that. Never met an adult that would. Well... there's a couple'a ones that insist that're usually kinda big in the industry or rich'r something, but never a pard as free as me! That's just dumb. And weird. Knot up all those awkward adjectives and let me lasso 'em in._

 _Joe? You're weird._ When Kishinuma had an opinion, that opinion was stated. Joe could accept that kind of guy. Two of his kid-friends back from home—one being the boy in the dresses; the other the person that he got his steady supply of dresses from in the first place—were that kind of guy, in fact. Small world after all. Though... As the man squished his eyes and debated upon the topic, he deliberated silently he had not a clue where this boy could be from. He looked to be around some late teenage year, in his getup, though the whole delinquent vibe could throw off a younger-looking kid. Joe honestly didn't know.

So, well, he asked. _Kishinuma, how old are you?_

He didn't still like the communications through minds through Pippy, who giggled beside himself, brown cheeks pinking. "Uh... seventeen..?" He spoke it like a question, like he'd hit his head—poor soul—somewhere after blooming conscious and now couldn't pull soot out of his head and make sense with it. Still, out was dragged a number, and with that number enough certainty that Joe could find safe. He tipped his floppy, brown hat to the boy and nodded slowly.

"I'm over three'r four times your age," he stated, smiling for no reason. The delinquent kid—too much of a simple and chosen nickname already used enough times to be accepted—just sort of sneered at that, though the grin in it twinkled and looked honest enough. He looked a little surprised, too. Joe didn't apologize for the randomly awkward question because he didn't work too much like that, and the boys mutually decided together that their interest would be best suited around focusing on getting out of this corner they'd become wedged in and nearly dusted on like regular furniture.

Their feet, marching like solemn soldiers, took a solid thumping rhythm that mostly followed suit. Pippy's smaller toes made softer, puffier sounds that, as he was a quadrupedal, hit both when he and Kishinuma stepped, but also in betwixt those moments as well. His purple eyes sparkled like newly-shined amethysts, and from what he could hear, the seismo had a healthily pumping heart, cheering the trio on as they ambled. The first lesson Joe learned about this whole school facility where young people learn was that when a desk randomly sat in the middle of the hallway and when you pushed at it and it didn't move: don't continue poking at it. It's not gonna move, no matter what.

Morbidly, snorting the notion away, he delectably denoted that they would be as stuck as the soft, squishy, small version of the table did they stop moving too. And he wasn't too sure on the thought of stopping. Glancing back into the narrow and twisted face of Kishinuma Yoshiki, blonde streaks not quite creeping past a chunk of his forehead, he decided that boy was determined as well: to find those others of his that he'd mentioned prior. No matter what the cost, his plan consisted strongly of searching out and hanging onto those other souls. Still, Joe didn't know about the situation for the people he knew best and, feebly hoping it'd be okay for them or something, he'd shrug every once in awhile and present himself with silent, emotional feelings of squishy, warm hope. It glowed tenderly upon him. Joe, the calmer soul he was, emotions never quite bubbling to the cusp of skin and reality around him, mostly shrugged over his shoulders the thought that perhaps he was the only one in here.

And yet, there came Pippy. Judging by this school location and how this whole world seemed to piece in Kishinuma but leave the seismo and the pard puzzled, it must've meant something about how they didn't quite fit in there. This wasn't quite their natural habitats. And... Pippy'd said he and his buddies, Dino and Droplet, were in here too. And... wait... _Pippy? Pard? That's you, Kishi'ma._ The way that sun-bleached face wrinkled at the nickname suggested Joe shouldn't keep using it. He did anyways. _How'd you guys even get here in the first place? I'm guessin' I ain't the only sucker here who was tossed through some earthquake after rudely waking up in the middle of the night—eh?_ Twas a guess; a poor guess, but the only guess he had.

Sauntering along behind and beside him, the two boys lulled into the creepy silence of the darkened hallways for a time, mulling over the question. The boy in his black jacket and pants straightened up first, and: _Uh, no?_

 _Y-yeah, that's pretty much what happened to-to... to us, though..._ Pippy pouted in the unacceptable moment of the predicament. _We all woke up around the same time—which was especially weird because none of his other vivosaurs woke up, too—and then we just kind of sat around f-for a... mm-moment... ch-cheerio... and we were gonna wake them up or something when the earthquake came and the ground peeled open and dear me, oh my, no such thing happened whatsoever!_ He looked quite fraught thinking about the memories. Prolly only wanted to go home. Poor, tuckered little guy.

This was Kishinuma's cue to slice his way through conversation and take enough wiggle space to open up a slot for himself. _I don't know what the hell the two of your are talking about!_ He had a way of stuffing fiery words into slits of shouting on his part. Honestly, if the guy wasn't careful, he'd always come off as angry. See, this teenager wasn't exactly the most detailed stud in the world. Joe wasn't either but he at least caught that one drift, which Kishinuma didn't. Joe began to wonder if he should bring that up when the blonde continued. His arms crossed, which linked and fueled a little more coals of emotion into ignition. _You're both just so... confusing! You guys don't belong here at all!_

Being the only adult in the situation, Joe took the shrug. _And you do?_

 _A-ah! No, but..._ That thankfully stemmed out some flame. The lines he'd driven into his own face began to ease up around the edges until lying flat _. Pippy, you and... that guy, you just don't belong here, even less than I do._ His thick, deep voice halted for a moment. For once, Joe actually felt like the boy was picking and choosing his words carefully, as he might deliberate over his first vivosaur, did he come from the same land the pard and the seismo did. But he didn't. His height fighting above Joe's own slouched and he sighed quietly. _Goddammit... I just want to get my friends out of here. I'm stressed, I'm tired, I'm pissed. Ugh..._

That had to be as close to an apology as Joe'd get from the boy. Shrugging, feelings unhurt, the orange-haired adult silently took this into acceptance. Fine by him. "Then ease yerself loose, boy," he murmured in his own tone. Pride for his chocolate-colored eyes came evident when Kishinuma's dark orbs cut into his and seemed to rest slightly at the sight of it. Perhaps a fervent soul like his could calm in areas where souls like the pard and the seismo lingered around. Or something.

"Fine, then..." He lulled into another daze and went silent, like that little girl with her face against the glass in the cabinet, only any and all fear of the situation had been ceased. At the moment, enough warmth teemed the air that one could hardly tell what kind of a place they were walking through so valiantly right then. Still, Joe stuck with his strangely less emotional self and calmly shrugged to himself as his knee-high brown boots made comforting splotches on the wood below. So tender, yet so strong, held each wooden plank. The closer the adult scrutinized and the more of an azure hue the ground gave off, like a hidden peel of color dressed over the usual wood happened to be a layer of blue. Did all the floorboards in this place give off rainbows? Well, rainbows were cool; Joe didn't see much of a problem.

Calmly he thrust a hand out to the right side and caught the edge of the hallway, thrumming a finger against it and turning the casual right. Because Pippy and Kishinuma had somehow become followers to this newbie, this apparent leader-esque sort of guy, they waddled after him obediently like they were his squiks on a farm or something. Now that was some balderdash. A fair-colored face scrunched up and he smirked to himself.

Down along the corridor steered up and led to a cold, concrete door, which fell back with a gelid breath and entered into an even colder room, concrete floors and walls encasing the male—though not-so masculine—trio in the death breath of a chamber surrounded by lockers, followed by a hollow, ripped-open door at the end of the cell-like room which appeared to have been unfortunately flogged open. Why the heck a door would be flogged like a body or something was a mystery Joe didn't feel intent on searching into. Twas... plain weird. A little wrong. Like that shouldn't happen.

Then the concrete opening back into the somewhat-more-welcoming hallway closed with a gash of lost light and a _THUKKKkkk..._ leaving the chamber drenched, drowning in shadows. "Damn," casually commented the blonde, then, "hey, what's with all the lockers here? What would an elementary kid need a locker for? They're kids. They sit around in their classes all day and learn from the teacher and keep their junk stored under their desks, and that was that. Well... there's always the chance they have some sport here or something." He strode past the possibly shorter adult and the much tinier vivosaur and knocked tentatively at the flogged, wooden door, then pouring his head out into the open. "Rain and a— _a pool?_ Why the hell would a bunch of kidsneed _a pool?_ " Curious, Joe stuck his head out too.

He didn't see what looked so great about pools and lockers and sports. Outside happened to be a mess of tree branches, dead matter, and other unfortunate bits of decomposition rotting in green and blue and brown splattered messes around the rims and cement encircling a significantly large puddle, not so quite as thick as a lake. He'd never seen such an obviously man-made wonder before. What was the use of digging out a bit of land and flooding it silly with water? He understood this culture of Kishinuma's less and less as he sauntered around more of the school.

"Weird, I know." Narrow, dark blue irises streaked around a thinner, black pupil caught bits of rainfall in the orb and seemed to smirk alongside his upturned lips. "I don't get it."

"Nnnn... welp! It looks like we're stuck'ere fer the time bein'. Might as well look around a little, I'd say, Kishinuma." Nope, he'd lied; he wasn't using the nickname.

Like a sudden epiphany had hit him, the blonde streaked his orbs back at Joe. "If you're so used to calling people by their first names, then why do you keep calling me by my last in the first place? You're weird."

Secretly, he took pride in being weird. Also, though, the orange-curled boy hadn't quite noticed that. Well, he'd introduced himself like _Kishinuma Yoshiki_ , so it kinda made him, y'know, sound like his first name was Kishinuma. "Oy? Didn't notice! What kinda cactus are ya tryin' to lasso me into, kid? You wanna be called Yoshiki? Then you durn will be." And he satisfactorily tipped his hat toward the boy as a sudden gust of wind sprayed the brim from the pardner's hands and sent his thick, brown, gigantic, beloved hat that even had a monster-like face and horns on it: went spiraling out toward the waters. Joe didn't even say a word. He durn was gonna split after his friggin hat when a smaller, colder hand stemmed off and shoved into his arm, squeezing the not muscular skin beneath and shooting multiple warnings.

"Don't go out there yet. I don't trust this place."

"But my haaaaat," mumbled his elder, pouting quietly. He shrugged at the link attaching to his arm, preventing his admittedly physically weak physique not have to break through a grip of someone like this Yoshiki's and instead bundled his arms around himself in his long, thick jacket, that pout like a rose in a romantic scene: the perfect, final touch. And when one was a pardner like him, he saw that happen. He saw those things. He saw a lot of things in his life. Personally, he'd mostly never been acquitted to such scenes—except for one distinct one with this long-passed ancient vivosaur that had possessed his body and left his soul for ransom: it was a long, harrowing story—though there were a few other exceptions, but Joe did know a lot of people: he had connections galore. Most of his true, close friends happened to be kid-friends but that was okay.

He honestly saw himself like a mom to them at times. Some of his kid-friends were cute and small or plain clumsy, so it didn't take a lot of trouble to see it. Joe shook his head with a grunt; emotions didn't twist him like they did for some people, but fragments embedded in them were always there, pieces Joe tended to accept and welcome with open arms. He didn't mind them like others did and enjoyed what he knew and what he remembered, both from his past experiences and those from others. Then his eyes trained back on his hat, which had given a lone, unceremonious tumble into the pool via wind, and sat there, dripping and blooping and threatening to plop right on in the waters. But he supposed he'd have to wait; Yoshiki kept a cold, dark orb trained on him.

"Fine, then," he grumbled softly at an attempt of being redundant to the teen's response prior. Joe abruptly turned heel and forced a hand past a solid wall of cobwebs through unrelenting fists, soon pushing into smelly, thick, oddly silky white strings and into the cavernous hole of a locker. It looked like a mouth that wanted to suck him in, and if he reached far enough, he'd hit tonsil.

Joe shook himself; it was nothing.

Casually, not all that upset in reality, Joe scraped off his collection of powdery cobwebs and, face squinting, thrust a fist into another gaping hole of silvery cement. Like if he dove through enough he'd win a prize, or something. Really, all the boy wanted to look for was something that might assist the strange-looking trio on their adventures in this "elementary school" for "little kids." If Joe ever had kids, he wasn't taking them to some swamp like this. Heck, no; he'd saddle them up on a mad t-rex before something as prestigious as this dump.

 _Scrunch._

Oh, wow. He'd actually got something at some point. Not sure how long it'd taken, though tactfully sighting he'd hunched over onto the bottom row of these cool slabs of lockers that froze to the tips of his fingers, the pard aimed his fingernails and quickly and inadvertently scraped the slip of paper-like substance off of the rim of the gaping hole, wincing and cringing at the sound, feeling the wind so easily pick up over his head that was so bare now. Sighing, he glimpsed at the paper and groaned again, a little louder. He had no idea where his reading glasses might've been. Prolly at home. He wasn't used to having fine print be thrown at him.

"Hell, how old are you?"

Joe blinked, a little taken back. "Uh... Yoshiki, I ain't even a hundred quite yet. Yeah, I'm gettin' there, but I ain't passed my first century yet." It was natural for people of his age to comfortably live up to one thousand years, even, in their life. But, geesh, Joe wasn't even at one hundred yet. Sure, he could be considered an adult by now, but he wasn't that old. He just had an adventurous, busy life. And he was far-sighted. Okay, Yoshiki, take a step back. Smirking beside himself, he tittered and stuck the laminated paper into Yoshiki's curled-open hand.

"I guess your age lives past a hundred easily or something? Ooookay then." Scrutinizing, he snorted. "Bullshit! That's a pretty modern-looking name tag! It's not something I recognize but—but it's still something!" Shaking his head, he mumbled the bold print on it. "Hmm... 'Paulowina Academy High School...' Ohp, and it appears the name ran ink or something. Damn... oh well. I don't even recognize the school." He shrugged his shoulders casually, plastering one hand to his side and another to his head. Oddly, it looked natural on the kid for such a strange pose. "We're safe, then."

Paul-o-win-a... The name... Oh. It registered in Joe's head: the first part of the word sounded a little like one of his kid-friends. Her name: Pauleen. For an idle moment, the pard pondered on whether or not that tan-faced girl might show up and find him. That'd be nice, sure, but he'd rather not see his kid-friends be tossed into a seriously harmful position like the one he and his new buddies were herded off into. "Oh.

"Yoshiki..." came the thick, western accent as it always did, "...how did you get here, if it wasn't waking up in the middle of the night?"

Blue eyes fogged, like the memories were that hard to paw back in. "Uh? Huh... It's been so long, I can hardly remember..." Joe would've questioned how it must've only been a couple hours at the latest, seeing how he looked as fresh as Pippy and himself did, but this looked to a pretty deep spiritual level. Unsure how he could help, he held his silence. "Uhh... oh, right. These eight people did some lousy charm with me, and we ended up here." How did he remember there were nine so vividly? "Hey, don't look at me like that: I know these things! I told you, I'm looking for important people to me. Eight others. Six are from... from school. One was our homeroom TA. The other... right, Satoshi's little sister. That's weird... I knew she was someone's little sister, but I thought it was more than him—ugh, this place is messing with my brain. Goddammit..." He shook himself firmly, but both men knew well enough just how much that helped—

 _KER-PLOOOOOSHHHhhhhhh...oooshhhh...oooshhhhh...ssshh..._

A pair of heads froze. "PIPPY!" "GODDAMMIT, YOU PIPSQUEAK!" Abiding to the one fate left, the males ducked through the flogged door and caught sight of a brown-scaled creature's head bobbling, then falling, below the waves, in the approximate position of where Joe's hat had gone off to.

"YOU FOOL!" screeched the boy beside him, and as a cold presence settled in the back of Joe's head, an unusual pickup of heart rate caught him in his throat. Something he'd... never quite felt before. As was, Joe didn't go so strong with emotions. Sure, he felt them, but he felt them weakly and they certainly never hit this hard. He felt, yes, but certainly not... not in this strange way. Was this how Dina—his sweet doll, that little Dina, a true kid to him—felt... then..? Something downright cold and nasty crawled up his shoulder and when Joe's eye hit the side of his face, he could see a vague, splitting resemblance to a hand, right down to tooth and nail. Awkwardly lifting a fair hand, he swatted lightly at it, and nothing happened. It just felt like the entirety of his right hand had skinny-dipped into a blizzard. Biting his lip, he receded, voiceless to the matter.

Seemed like something was biting on his fishin' hook, and he didn't know how much he wanted to pull it up and examine it. This just seemed like one of those weirdo things you didn't go messing with if you liked the whole concept of existence, all that wonderful darn-tootin' stuff. And Joe had experiences with those; everyone pretty much got the gist of it, where he was from.

Yeah, he came from a different place than weird blonde Yoshiki did. That he did. That Pippy did, and all of his friends that came along for the ride with their vivosaur tot of a buddy, who had now grown over the scale to his actual size which totaled over one hundred feet and—somehow, as huge as the creature grew to his standard size, the rims of the waters around him either stippled his growth or swamped alongside him, until the spray and chime of voluptuous, tumultuous, downright roaring waves crashed and foamed and steamed, and the only link between the older boy and younger was the hand still firm on the elder's elbow.

They each adapted to the use of telepathic speak. It'd be harder to talk with your jaw flapping and all this seawater contaminated with crud came and poisoned some inner organs. Neither had a thought of how that might work, but both accepted it'd be better if they didn't try to find out. Their lives... had to be... on the line, here. Just like that moment with the little girl, the cabinet, and the big man with the hammer and full capability to end a life. And that... meant something.

Another piece of the home Joe lived in, was a part of, was their life-spans. In vivid, livid sorts of comparison to Yoshiki's own, and long his life was expected to go, Joe was practically immortal. And honestly, in the place he came from, it wasn't exactly easy for a soul to call it quits and die. They... yeah, they lived for thousands of years: _thousands._ Being in the face of death and feeling its cold breath on you wasn't something that he woke up to back home. And yet, in this place, it was all he could feel. Everywhere. Tugging at him. Warning him. Death could be so much as a simple misstep away. It could have its fancy cleaver waggling up in the air, inches from marking him up good, and he couldn't even tell because he was blinded by this mindless notion that had covered everything. In singular moments like these where his life very obviously hung on a very thin line: it wasn't exactly a challenge to see.

Grinding his teeth, screwing up his chin and trying as hard as he could to focus through this thunder of massacre voices that acted like some stringy occult bating breath down his neck, what was a pard to do but shake his head and tug the poor teen from his side up with him, into the heart of danger?

How much danger? Enough that when a thick, brown foot like a cylindrical beast all on its own and slammed, shuddering into concrete and water just a trip and a fall from the men trying to stop this crazy occurrence, they could feel the puff of wind on them and smell a faint scent of decay on the poor thing's monstrous toe.

 _Holy hell—I don't like the look of this, goddammittttt!_ The poor soul proceeded to lose his balance, to which a slightly-upset pardner yanked him back up to his feet and shoved them both on their way. He snorted as something cold and bony—like a fossil but much more... alive—left a welt on the unprotected top of his head.

A suck in of breath, and, _We just keep movin', boy. Ain't much more we can do right at the moment but try to help Pippy._ He stopped and tossed a bit of his sanity at the looming creature far up above him. _PIPPPYYYYYYYYY!_

 _Fight it, Ayu—PIPPY!_

Perhaps the blonde had more than a clue of what the haywire was makin' everything so mad. Quietly, the elder of the situation questioned his other kid-friend upon the matter.

 _Eh? Yeah, I guess you could call it something like that. I've seen this kind of thing before... Not... not with Pippy, but with... oh, yeah, definitely with someone else. It was bad, though. Worse than this. Like... at some point I must've took a wrong turn and she'd pushed me down the stairs and before I knew it the bones in my body were skewering me open, and everything had gone black and nothing was right... and... ugh... I can't even remember everything. Goddammit. I hate this hell. I'd love to find an exit and quit if my friends weren't still stuck in here without me alongside them. Uugghh..._ Then Yoshiki snorted, too, and Joe could tell that in these moments of cowardice-bravery, the blonde teenager donned in black was taller than the adult beside him.

With that cold darkness of death and frustration peeling about them only to uncover more black loss and blinding resentment, stumbling and tripping and practically flushing their lives down some lonely hole, it was a wonder how in the end the seismo reached a calm enough state with the men dodging around beneath him in some failing attempt to restore order that the three dulled to a peaceful sort of moment that felt surreal, like it didn't belong in a monster home like this, but it dressed the trio and they fell to their knees in panting, sweating, otherwise smelly and bruised praise in front of a shrunken pool and a shrunken quadrupedal the color of the mud he'd trounced around, his royal purple eyes eventually returning a shadow of a gleam.

Yoshiki knew what was up in that moment. At some point he must've taken charge, as when Joe regained sense of consciousness, he felt a sore arm and derived it from the fact that he'd become the tugged one with no sense of reason and this kid had taken over. Not bad; not bad. Then again, Joe wasn't old or anything, all things considered, where he came from. He was pretty young, so that didn't mean too much anyway. But whatever. It was over. All they had to show for it was the torn clump of fabric and bone sitting there in front of the rim of the pool.

"Hey," casually voiced their oddly experienced member, dark orbs slitting and sidling up the slop, "isn't that a dead body?" His deep tone retorted concern, and confusion sat awash like a new tidal wave.

The pard, cool as that cucumber he somehow remained similar to, just blinked. "Oh, yeah, I think it is."

Pippy displayed varying levels of disapproval in sight of this mess and shuddered, falling back, shivering enough to look like he'd pop into his colossal, mindless entity of a form. A seismo was particularly gigantic, and with this place as it was, neither of his two partners liked that idea. Joe fell to his dark-jean-stifled knees and patted rough but gentle at the creature, and Yoshiki calmly instructed him to fight it. Fight it til the end, then fight it some more, but either way, don't let it win. Never let it win: ever.

Somehow, Pippy held out on his own.

When the trio returned, they found that their door through that cold, barren locker room had been unlocked again, and as they exited, Pippy handled the fabric of mottled brown from his maw and to Joe's head, who didn't care that Yoshiki told him he'd catch a cold wearing the sopping thing and continued to let it wet his head as he sauntered into those creepy, dark, wooden hallways all over again.

The only true difference was how much visibly more the seismo shook, how much easier he looked to crack—like a fragile piece of dainty furnishing—and how much more fear tore into his very sense of self.

If this little squirt took so much more of this nonsense, he wasn't gonna make it. He was a gentle sort of soul, like a dandelion, and he didn't do well in these sorts of situations.

At all costs, Pippy's life was evermore on the line than anyone else's.

And that was something his two buddies wanted to void at all of _their_ costs. Oh, so badly.

 **Me: I'm sorry, guys, that this took a week instead of two days! So... my Sunday was busy. There was swimming, shopping, and also trying on clothes in a swimsuit. Not such an easy feat. Anyway, school doesn't like it when I try to write the entire second half of a chapter all in one day so it took multiple plural days BUT I FINISHED AND PLAN TO GET CHAPTER SIX DONE BEFORE THE END OF THE WEEKEND YAAAYY!**

 **Yoshiki: she's gonna snap before Pippy frickin hell**

 **Pippy: sobs quietly**

 **Joe: oyyy, pardners... -w-**


	6. She was Merciful

**Dino: Seriously. When do I show up again.**

 **Me: Well, Arc II just started. So now you've gotten a taste of who's here and what's going on. All of that good stuff.**

 **Dino: yeah whatever. I don't care; what matters is, do IIIIII come back? Hmm? Please? Say yes! Say yes!**

 **Rupert: I cannot see why you should be so keen on watching your hopes and dreams turn cold and terrified in front of you.**

 **Dino: Well you know what, I do.**

 **Me: You do what?**

 **Dino: I do... feel keen. You know. Ugh, I made a grammar turd. WHATEVER. GET ME BACK INTO THE STORY!**

Chapter Six: She was Merciful

Sucking in a breath, it scrunched somewhere rancid in the roadway between his throat and his lungs. Or probably it never made it. With all the creepy voodoo nonsense littered in the hallways, Joe wasn't even sure if the chunk of atmosphere crammed into his body was even the right sorta air anymore. It might've been contaminated with something casually illogical like... nails. Hammer nails, silvery nails, the _ping-ping-ping_ nails driven on a stake into a biting slate of wood to hold bits and pieces of this school together in rust of those old nails. All the more breaths he took in this school, the possibility of death felt like it lurched further home to the target of his heart. One stab was all it took. At least, he thought. Maybe it took more, but the heart was home, and shattering that blood vessel sure as rain hit something on the fields of life in his body.

Some pards are extra lucky and live on the trail longer. Others, not so much. The fact that this entire habitat didn't feel all too safe just kept striking at the poor orange-haired guy, who knew all too well it wouldn't take much. No, it wouldn't. It seemed like his mind was emotionally jarred when Yoshiki's turn was up and he had to carry the shuddering, brown mass of scales instead: poor, dear Pippy, stoked out of his mind. Stoked to a point where it turned to jelly and cooled the insides of him, but not in the good kind of cooling. Oh, there was a bad kind, and it had an appetite for taking this little sucker in.

Joe and Yoshiki had one big job: keep Pippy sane. It... so far didn't do all that much. Someone carried the jello-like mass as he quaked and struggled while the other looked for clues and tried to make sense out of this seismo-sized mess. They just kept running into holes instead of some hopeful flicker of progress, so their chances stayed pretty dark. And cold. Hugging Pippy felt like hugging the moon on a lonely night, when it was just Joe staring up at the skies and nobody else.

Only colder: further gelid, encroaching upon him, crafting a reliable snare that the pard didn't feel all the happiest about. Snorting softly, he tightened his left arm around Pippy's body, removed his right, and, tearing off his thick, brown hat, shook his head of to-chin-length orange curls, soon placing his hat back to his head and lessening the weight to two arms' worth instead of one doing all the work. On a smaller note, Joe did believe in teamwork.

Thus, when he considered his time up, he turned and cheerfully tapped Yoshiki on his black-covered shoulder and plopped the brown, crumbly-colored sauropod into his face. Gentle lilac stared into dark waters; then, with an affirmative sigh, the boy shrugged back into the weight and accepted Pippy. Joe took over on their scavenger hunt for an unmarred passage, or as safe as this place got to, with a small assortment of keys jangling on his belt. They'd found three on their slight misadventures, and hey, while they found them, might as well keep them. One never knew when a little silvery luck would swoop in and save the day.

Days needed a lot more of that saving in this creepy, oversized shack. Joe, uncomfortably sneezing into the musty air in front of him, stumbled on a floorboard and recovered smoothly. Behind him, the teen snorted and freely chortled, Pippy remaining unresponsive. "You're weird, Joe," had become his mandatory catchphrase to use whenever the adult did something out of what he called his line. Or at least how adults surely acted in his world.

"Well, Kishinuma Yoshiki, ye ain't the finest, starchiest pair'o slacks I've seen." Nor the handsomest dress, as one of his kid-friends would put it. Sighing airily, shaking out his head of curls the slightest, Joe moved onward, only tripping a couple more times which the blonde mostly didn't point out other than a harsh slap-on-the-back bark of laughter. It wasn't too bad. He liked the kid more than he liked some people. Sure, not as much as others, but more than some. He wasn't all that bad. Just had a temper Joe semi attempted to saunter around. Sometimes kicked at. It was a little funny.

In a place like this, laughing at dumb things helped. It really did. So the boys kind of accepted that they were gonna pick on each other, so long as it kept their spirits from pure cannibalistic putdowns. That was a hazardous line to be crossed.

Finally, somehow, miraculously, a large, warm, fair hand crossed a doorknob, and a face lit up with due respect and surprise. "Why, lookie here," he whistled softly, "I think we've got a solution breathing down on us."

"You don't have to get so excited about a door like that," retorted the blonde as kindly as he did. A tan face lost its worry lines behind the pardner; nobody mentioned it and only he felt it. Still, they made it past that ugly mess of hallways. That had to mean they were doing, well, something right. A gentle, cautious turn, and even without the a silvery bit of luck, the wooden obstacle slid cleanly right open, allowing a trio of male faces to sink into the red, burning thingy on the ground just in front of it.

This place got on Joe's nerves more than anything he'd felt in his entire life: and people from his home didn't have short chances of living and all that jazz. This was all creepy, smelly, uncharted, uncomfortable territory.

Yoshiki raised a hand from a scaled flank to poke his apparent... _adult friend—_ he had eight people he'd trust and he didn't have any adult friends besides that; this was creepy for him—when he caught the stench of... rot. Heaps and heaps of filthy, scouring, burning rot. "Oh God," was all he had to say to that, raising a hand to pinch his nose. "O' Gawd." A cough.

"Y-yuck." Neither of the boys knew what to do at that. They just sort of stared down at the eternal, ethereal flame, not even taking notice to what might be around them, just... just staring at the flame guy sort of. He sat on his haunches on a mighty fine pile of his own chum, he did. At least... oh, no wait. Joe really needed his reading glasses, because that bony pile of mush and red and bone had long, feminine strands of hair and pleated rips of a skirt showed around some crunching junk.

The female did not like being intruded upon. She also did not like being called a _yuck_ to her face, and just an _o' Gawd_ with a plugged nose to dish it out. A gap creased in her red-spirited face and a shriek filled first the room, then the halls, stench and rot and decay and flame, ethereal flame burning and churning at the boys, tossing them back and effectively slamming the door shut. Both men bounced down hard on their rumps and, their hearts stamping madly for their lives in a race that took them nowhere and didn't help at all, they stood with scrunched faces.

Plucking his hat off the floor, Joe mumbled to himself, "How in the world..?"

Sliding a hand through his somewhat-spiked and otherwise disheveled hair, Yoshiki shrugged in his three layers of clothes and firmly planted his other hand to his side. He and that pose again. "I don't have a hell of a clue," he offered mildly in his deep, accented tone. Joe's stood sunny and western—twisted and otherwise different in comparison.

"D'you have anythin' on hand we could, like, give her? Peace offerin'? Flowers? Uh... a hair piece? I durrno..."

"I'm a guy too, Joe."

"Yeah, I know. Don't you have like a girlfriend er somethin', though, that you might have from her? Of course, if you have a boyfriend—"

" _You have no need to question my girlfriend._ "

"Ah! So she's in here too, I take it! Makes ya nervous. Ya got anything of hers with'a?"

"Yeah."

"What?"

"A few candles."

"Oh okay then—candles. Hm. Wonder if Dina'd like candles."

"So, what, Dina's your girlfriend?"

"Err, no, she's my durned daughter. Well, sorta. I found her in the wilderness when she was just a sprout of a girl, then she was pretty much raised under me for some five er so years—nah. More than five. Six? Seven? Yeah, maybe seven." Either way, it wasn't important as the situation at hand. "Plus, Dina has a boyfriend, and I'd rather be stuck here with you than take her boy away from her. Durn, they're attached." He shook himself; the memories stuck like vacant tumbleweeds in the wind, and no, they didn't go away. Someone was staining grape-juice memories all over him, and he couldn't wash them out. Joe felt fond and a little warm thinking about the girl: though she didn't matter, cuz she wasn't here.

Yoshiki's eyes glittered thoughtfully, a little reluctant to let go of the so casual conversation that easily. "How attached, d'you think? Any more attached than Mayu is to our ol' Shige-nii and I think I'd be sick. Pretty damn sick, too. I'd like to see someone bypass them. It took ages for that guy to open up to all of us, but damn, the closeness to that girl..." Shaking away fluffy warm cuddly-mammal memories, the blonde let out a sigh. "I suppose there'll be no more teasing unless we can find them. Ugh, we have to find them; I'll go crazy if we don't."

"Settle down, pard. Going crazy ain't part of the plan."

Nobody pointed out the cold, limpid, crumbled shape of the sauropod with his long neck and tail who hadn't even budged after falling like loose soil to the floor, in which the delinquent-like but not -hearted kid hoisted gently, murmuring "Oi, eaaaaasy there" some. It wasn't like he had a soft heart—his friends could assure that he didn't—but no one else was there to help out Pippy, and hey, it was his turn. Also... he kind of liked the idea of protecting another life and keeping it safe, feeling like some sort of protector to a kindling candle, as he was sure Ayumi must be doing, wherever she was. It'd been true; he did have some of her waxy, white fire-bearers on hand, because she insisted since she was like that and... well, maybe it'd help, he realized suddenly, to use them, to be that protector.

Swiping a match across his pant leg all the casual, setting a light onto one of such candles, he handled it gently and stared a little jolted when a nubby, brown paw actually moved to take in the light and hold it. Dull, purple orbs stared without seeing, but clenched tighter than he ever thought a paw could go. These things certainly weren't an ordinary cat, or, well, oversized lizard. Not even dinosaur, as he knew them, fit, though Pippy looked like one. What was it Joe'd called them as? Vivosaurs, right. Special little things.

They were weird just like Joe was.

"So, uh," said adult mumbled in an attempt to broach something probably weird or funky or something, "your girlfriend's into candles. Like... ghost stuff... maybe..? Er, would she know about the whole ghost problem we've got down here? Does she get those things?"

Yoshiki only knew because Ayumi did, and even then, only because of strong insisting on her part because she had a temper and she had this strong will even he didn't like stepping too close to sometimes: like she was her own candle and when that flame got hot enough... Smirking to himself, the boy calmly responded:

"Well, yeah... sort of. Good enough, I'm going to assume, because, hell, sort of is better than nothing. We'll need holy water or something of the sort, but I have no idea where we'd get something like that in this screwed place."

"Uhhhh... is there, like, a medical station or somewhere with holy water in it?"

"I think there's an infirmary." A chill ran down the tough kid's spine, but he was more of a _whatever_ than a superstition kinda guy, so he went on. "Those're medical stations. As close as we're getting to a holy-water-giving station." With his deep, sharp tone that simple, Yoshiki almost laughed at himself. He usually wasn't the guy people went to for explanations, and it even felt weird to relay junk he just happened to know because the girl he loved was into that kind of occultist stuff, so he took it lightly.

Joe's chocolate orbs blinked like that clicked perfect sense into shape. But what did this seventeen-year-old kid know, anyways? Maybe it made sense for the geezer. It was so weird being friends with not only someone that wasn't part of the other eight he knew that was also an adult. "Okay, we'll check there. So what's holy water?"

"How the hell should I know? It's holy water. Probably does holy crap, I don't know. Ayumi told me, I wasn't really paying attention all that much." No awkward laughter: just cool, calm acceptance of the matter. Feeling a rush of lucky confidence like he knew where this elementary school's infirmary was, weird since yeah all schools had one but how was he supposed to map this place inside out, the delinquent rose his dark orbs and stuffed Pippy into the adult's hands, slouching as he sauntered off as he managed to not fall into a hole and wend around the line of halls and pockmarked regions. As they traipsed on over, Joe's hands clasping over the just-as-shaken seismo with his own paws—hands—same thing clasped upon that little waxy lighthouse leading him astray of the darkness breathing down on them like a bunch of filthy junk the pard didn't care for: something rattled by his ear. Head turned to the left side, there it sat, a sticky paper only held onto the walls by a lot of drying red liquid that, if not in this lovely situation, could've easily been mistaken for a fallacy on red paint, but had this faint, curdling metallic stench and an arsenal of bubbly knots proving otherwise. Chocolate brown eyes skimmed the page meagerly with the vague understanding that this thing probably wasn't very happy of a message.

 **Now Fukuroi's gone, and all I have left to look for is Kurosaki, who the last I saw was in these halls before he'd taken off and I'd lost him and—oh, I hate this! Get me out of here! Get me out of this hell where my friends all die! Where it looks like not even I'll last! I hate this! I hate this! I hatethis!Ihate this!Ihatethis!Ihatethis—** and so on, as the words began blurring and mixing with the red, bubbly substance with the hint of a rancid tang on it. A dull red, a sort of rusty red, this note... in some parts, looked particularly fresh, and in others it was ready to roll off the wall and be done with itself.

Yeah, it wasn't very happy of a message. Joe had no idea who any of these people were, but the sight alone kind of freaked him out. Glancing around the lime-green lines of notebook paper, peering at the bottom, he found a small inscription with a date: **Heavenly Host Classroom 3-A Logbook.** Oh, so she didn't just have paper on her. Must've gotten it from this weirdo school somewhere. Curiously the adult wondered with a childish, cocked head who this person was and if they were still alive, and if Yoshiki knew about them. Oh, gosh, what if this was his girlfriend or one of his friends: what if they were all his friends? Face rapidly turning red, the pard veered his head out to the sauntering blonde. "Ooi! Yoshiki! What're yer friends' names?"

A snort. "Why the hell does it matter?"

"It does!"

This ferocity and determined spike in tone got the kid to answer already. "Uhhh... There's the Mochida siblings: Satoshi, Yuka... and Ms. Yui—er, Shishido Yui... Suzumoto—Mayu—and Shige-nii, who we all pretty much call Shige-nii: Morishige Sakutaro. Uhh... Oh. Right. Nakashima Naomi, Shinohara Seiko, and, well, Shinozaki... Ayumi."

"Oh, phew. None'a them varmits ring a bell."

"Uh, what?"

"I saw a thing on the wall and thought it might've been somethin' bad."

Snazzily as his voice droned down further from the hall, Yoshiki retorted with, "How many other things are on the walls here? Look, here's a corpse." As if to prove this point, his slippers _CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNNCHHed_ on some skeletal body part. "And heere's another." _CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNCH._ "And one right here." _CRUNCH._

By this point, Pippy's slits of ears were protected by Joe's slinging his thick hat under the poor pard's tiny—shrunken—brown head and muttered a country tune under his breath like a chant. After two more encounters, Yoshiki did stop, and hesitantly called to make sure the rest of his trio hadn't left him alone in this creepy place. Joe didn't blame him: who in their durn straight mind wanted to be ditched to hang with the shadows in this creaky old thing? Joe hollered back coolly, and, examining a couple other slits of papers on the walls, started back to following his comrade. As he did so, recalling those five corpse-crunching schemes, the thick hat drove over Pippy's entire face to prevent such sights staining him.

Those other notes were a little shorter. One simply read **I watched my rival from school choke to death on a dissected frog today** while the other left him with a cheery **Everyone is against you. Take no sides and run already.**

Neither of the two gnawed at him. He did have a clear head, and that kinda junk didn't get to him. Now, did he begin to recognize names, he'd have a problem. Any of those eight Yoshiki'd put into the light alongside any names Joe himself might recognize wouldn't bode all the well. He quickly checked with himself on a few name combinations that would be pretty big downers and sighed softly to no one. From the names he had seen so far, it didn't sound like it'd be easy to find one that met his criteria, as they all were awkward and fluctuated and cut-up like Yo-shi-ki's and his buddies' and not so much something as simply-pronounced, floaty, even, as, say, Joe Wildwest. His kid friends had similar names to that matter, so he wasn't all that worried.

As the pard rounded the corner, the shivering seismo in his arms with his hat on, he came across the line of five corpses, all perfectly set into place and seated in a row like they were about to dine on the most exquisite teas and crumpets with the minister of Nomadistan—long story from a strange nation—and so creepily alive-looking. Well, bone showed, and sticky red bits as well as browning bruises and limpid skin proved otherwise, as well as their torn clothing, but still.

He only managed to even come close to recognizing one character's fabric worn and it sent his heart in a new tizzy: these messy, unexpectedly strong emotions. He really wasn't used to it. His calm nature didn't approve of this. Shaking his head, Joe's boots went _thump thump thump_ in the dark as he clattered and shoved himself closer to the fourth kid, who had hair missing but wore a thick, bubbly green dress and he knew two kids who could be valid of that.

A small ID tag pinned to its chest had him grapple at it and turn it over, a shock of a sigh punching his chest when the name **Homahora Yuzuki** blared instead of what he'd feared it might be: Todd Hurican. Pauleen—just Pauleen. Simple and both wore dresses, both of his dear kid friends, and a weight was lifted off his shoulders like he'd clutched the falling sky and now it was dismissed of him. Wow. What a great relief. But Joe simply shrugged it off and patted at poor dead Yuzuki—backwards, like with Yoshiki's name—and thanked her for not being who he thought and feared it might be.

This whole game with the surging of emotions cutting off at his circulation and plucking dangerous heart strings that beat and beat and shouldn't be messed with was tiring him out. But Joe had a delinquent-looking kid to catch and he didn't think he should ditch the guy. If he was the leader, having his followers get this hopeless wouldn't be something he enjoyed. So Joe shrugged this off as well and lumbered up the rows of thick, wooden stairs lurching with the decaying scent of the thirsting dead and, rounding a new bend, climbing up another scale of hard, brown oak and dodging a couple more holes, because they were everywhere, he found a red-faced, blonde-haired boy whose height spun around Joe's and suggested his being taller yelling and pounding at the first door on sight.

"Uh..." He blinked dutifully. "Infirma—"

"LET ME IN, GODDAMMIT! YOU LITTLE BASTARD, YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME?!"

"Yep okay that didn't sound very good. Yoshiki— _Yoshiki?"_

"LET ME IN! LET ME IN RIGHT NOW, GODDAMMIT! I'M TELLING YOU TO—"

Wow, this was awkward. As the adult so much in charge sort of pretty much basically, the only barely shorter man—dignity storage—placed a fair hand on the tan boy's shoulder and gently but strong enough steered him away from the wooden inanimate object he had a thing against. "Use your inside voice, pard. C'mon. Spill it. What's goin' on round here? What sorta hoedown set fire to ya, boy?"

This, somehow, calmed the angry spirit enough that he grunted through a prison of teeth in a gritted, restrained tone quiet enough to submit from being a yell to more of a squeaky growl. " _The door magically shut._ "

"Oh, did it now?" His boot began to _tap, tap, tap_ against the floor in a thrumming pattern.

" _Yes, goddammit. Yes._ And doors. Don't. Do. That."

The nonchalant adult shrugged his thick jacketed-shoulders as best as he could with both hands mostly secured to Pippy: one having been retired to Yoshiki's shoulder. "I have some purdy durn good keys on me right now. How bout you watch over Pippy, and I'll go try a few a' them and go search out fer this holy water, mmkay? How's that sound?"

Yoshiki snorted. "Whatever." Still, he didn't try to yell or anything, and his face flushed out of red, regaining its usual gently-tan composure. So Joe plopped the cold vivosaur with his candle on top of the kid friend's lap, who slumped onto the ground and laid there, back against the wall, head held high. His rushing-waters of eyes sealed shut for the time being. Yeah; smart of him to take a rest. Feeling like he could use one too, but knowing this wasn't the time, the pard parted his jaws, plowed through a nice, deep breath, and stamped his long, brown boots over the azure-hinted ground and turned back to the door in the other wall, plucking back a key and cranking it in. With a faithful _chink,_ the wood slid right open without so much as a splinter in his hand. Joe nodded at this and continued on into the room.

He then learned the true definition of "infirmary." Basically an average-looking room, with the same wooden walls and floors and a couple of holes because those were all over the place, but the whole furnishing business took quite the turn. On his left sat a pair of cots like an old, faithful married couple, strung over by a nice, clean sheet which hung on some pipes and made a weird contraption; further along that left wall, stretching to the back, stood like a buncha soldiers some cabinets similar to the one he'd been stuck in not long ago, and also a sink, and a funny red poster covered in red markings and rips and tears; the back wall was pretty straight and tidy, just had a couple long-backed chairs scattered around; the right wall was inaccessible due to thick, goading holes: and in the center of the room, a musty old desk sat, official-looking, like the one he had back at home, with a plush chair in it as well as papers and books scattered across the front.

For some reason, this infirmary sight made his heart skip a few beats.

Scratch that: a lot more than a few beats.

Interestingly, this strange stain, scattered from a specified mark on the ground that was thick and wet down to the strings of web-like prints on the walls suggested something important. Something very... very important to him. But he couldn't quite pull on what.

When he passed through the stain on his way to the cabinets, one word imprinted hard into his skull: _selfish._ Joe just sorta blinked. Weird. The longer he stood in the crossroads of what-just-happened and pretend-nothing-did, the harder it scuffed and stuck, until it felt like fingers had clamped on that one thought and was forcibly shoving it through his entire cranium, brain, and bone alike to make sure he never let go of it. Oddly, stepping away from that dark, liquid stain stopped scant of all remote stamping of that word from attacking him, and only left a whiff of what was there just behind him. Bewildered, Joe shook his head a little and wondered if that was what Yoshiki saw.

But it didn't feel like it.

This place gave him some mean heebie-jeebies. Forking his gaze over each of the rows of cabinets—three in total, two jammed to his left of the sink and one leaning to the wall by the right of it—he could tell that some of the shelves, musty as they were, had smaller rows embedded in them, of bottles. And those bottles all mostly had the same texture of dust, but two: one in the left cabinet, which he easily creaked open with a crook of his arm, slashing out to the left as an opening, gleamed brightly. Peering at it, Joe found speckled bubbles gently popping about in it, and the cool, crisp look of water swirled around inside the petite, relatively clean bottle. Joe quickly pocketed this one in his jacket, then turned to that third cabinet on his right of the sink, which happened to be colored a putrid gray made to look like a container taped to some pipe works. Didn't smell all that fine, either.

Like vivosaur dung. Fresh vivosaur dung. Only worse and had hints of something like ammonia. Ugh, ammonia. He gagged a little and, shaking out his gently-flushed face, lumbered back to that other cabinet, where inside, sat such a clean bottle that no dust permeated it whatsoever. In fact, removing it from the shelf left not the faintest ring of dust on the old teak wood cabinet shelf. Inside was a sparkling substance like water, but stiff, little clippings of something hinted at pink lurked inside. Reminded him of rose petals or something. Or fingernails, depending on who was asking. Because it looked like a good idea at the time, Joe pocketed this one too.

A cold touch hit his heart, and he decided it was time to leave the infirmary. And not too soon; the moment he exited that dingy little junk depot, the door slammed back in place behind him and the key popped out of its nook, tumbling down through a crack in the creaky floorboards before anyone had the sense to scoop it away from its demise.

Yoshiki, wide awake by this time, offered a shrug. "So much of that. Well, I could care less about returning to that dump."

The pard thought about trying to bring up that whole _selfish_ thing and see if, by chance, his blonde kid-friend did get it. "Didya not like it there and get thrown out because of this... well, I think I saw some weird stains in that place. They're messed up and I felt really awkward standin' around 'em."

"Mm?" He shook his head curtly to end conversation. "Uh, nope. None of that," came the deep and accent-lined response, all thick and wrapped together. Joe's heart poked at that: so it had to be something meant for him. Him alone, whatever that meant. He didn't know. Shaking his curled head and feeling insecure without his hat on, Joe took the seismo back and waited for the delinquent kid to turn around and head back down the stairway, where he soon picked up the realization that this kid wasn't good with directions all that well all the time and nearly led them off to the right where some fishy-lookin' door sat around, when Joe coughed and shook his head sideways, to the left, and they followed suit. "Where were we going again?"

"I think room 4-A er somethin' like that. Yeah, that sounds bout right. Here." He hefted that poor, coldblooded—so obvious now—creature and planted him into Yoshiki's fumbled arms, pushing off to the left where on his right now he could see those creepy messages inscribed on the walls. Quickly, recalling that the corpses had been passed now, his hand swept back and slapped his hat back into his possession in one motion, then plopped it righteously on his head. Course punctured in mind to the best of his recollections, Joe cut across the hallways with purpose and found himself dodging holes he could recognize.

Lightly, like a warning—and he had a good idea about warnings—some ominous chime of thunder rattled in the distance. Nearby, the pard and his buddies, much less Pippy, couldn't see any vague interpretation of a window, though up ahead he recalled that one funky opening to the room, that entrance hallway or something of the school, though Yoshiki vowed he'd never step foot in there so they kinda avoided that dip of space, but maybe the thunder originated out of there. Just to check, after passing by the double-door opening of the entrance hallway, Joe tugged at a knob.

Stiff as a board. Ain't opening anytime soon. So it prolly didn't come out of there. Casually moving on, smoothing his used left hand over his pants like comfort, he went on and continued marking back at holes he knew so well and didn't wanna get caught falling into. Who the heck knew what kinda fun surprises laid down there at the bottom, and who the heck had an urge to find out?

Calmly, he lumbered down the hallway more over azure flooring, his silent but mostly cheery blonde buddy following closely, Pippy as truant as ever in his idleness. Nothing much of interest. A note on the wall let him know, **The holes in the ground lead to somewhere more atypical and disturbing than what you find out here.** A hastily tacked-on bit of fabric had words gnawed in: **MAKE YOUR CHOICE WISELY** and **DON'T GO IN THERE** and **YOU SUCCUMB TO THE SCHOOL—soeasily.** The rest of the peachy orange cloth was torn and hung like wind chimes off the edges. Testily, Joe planted a hand firm against the wall and screwed up his eyes, glancing curiously down at said hole, when the ground went clammy underneath his boots.

It was like someone had scooped up the world and started shaking. Oy, did he mean business, this guy. Joe's eyes flung across all creation in this single hall alone and fell upon a crack that his body soon slammed against. Breath collapsed out on him; he deliberated staying put. Gasping, clawing at breathing, staring dazedly at the flickering lights above as thunder howled and Joe gasped at his lungs and tried to get them to work out, a buzzing noise deposited behind his ear and the pard shook his head with the shaking of the room—like some twisted earthquake now curled up about him—curls bouncing and the sound blooming on the tips of consciousness. Dots sparked against his sight. They bounced like living creatures and fell flat back. He sneezed, head snapped against wood, the uncomfortable touch of splinters stabbing.

Panting and gasping, it became evident that sitting here and riding out the storm was his best idea in a long time.

He shook, fell back, coughed, spat—spat red, waited and lumbered in place and stared aimlessly at the bulb flickering above and oh geez his head felt like some poor, split, pulpy fruit and he didn't like it here and felt tempted to somehow... he didn't even know. He felt tempted to do something stupid, that's what. And when it felt like it would never end, something ceased, and the world stopped spinning so gallantly. Pieces of the universe fell back into place alongside Joe's humanity. He ground his feet into place and somehow found himself standing and walking not all too hard, soon flanked by Yoshiki and the bundle of brown he carried. The candle had stayed put and still produced a light glow.

Then out out of nowhere, it puffed out. Not a big deal. The lightning didn't change as was. But Joe's crawling, chocolate eyes slunk back to the floor, now an uncouth, knotted fixture of an unhealthy black, and he didn't know what to think. The air felt just as fine and dandy as it did before the earthquake thing, all he graciously accepted, and to the most part Yoshiki didn't look all that surprised. Though he had his eyes shut, so who knew. "Uh. Yoshiki..?" It looked kinda unnatural to have a sense that important blocked up.

"I think I got dust in it or something," he mumbled sorely in a much more tired tone of voice, the face flat and stretched thin on his skin. "Just... let me..." He lurched and took a swatch from Joe's dark jacket, hanging on tightly. "Wow, this is some quality stuff." An awkward laugh. "Heh."

Joe just nodded a little, jabbered aimlessly, and lumbered down more. Pippy had one hand securing him now. Joe didn't know what to feel other than mighty fine worried and confused and knotty junk all like that. He was worried, a little. Strange things were creaking in the back of his hearing and vision, stuff he didn't like the thought of. Also one of his buddies had lost his eyesight for the time being which didn't really put off a happy feeling. And Pippy, he sure hoped, was still Pippy.

Not quite. _Eee...eeeeeeee..._ A fluttering pant of breath, followed by a cold stab of some squishy sounds that threatened to crawl up Joe's ears. He narrowed his eyes, didn't let it get to him, but the sensation hung in the air like a freak decoration. Pippy continued his freaky wheezing. The hallway had elongated into its curdled, dark step, and cracks and scraps on the wall finalized that this was something new. Very... very new. The pard blinked sourly at this and felt some kinda uneasiness in him, like he'd... done something... bad? Wrong? But he... how did someone do something wrong in this pit of weirdness? It'd be pretty hard to mess up bad enough that a shifty uneasiness, cold like ice, blocked the ability to breathe in his throat, pretty much crumpling its uses. He gasped for a moment and regained enough air to go on.

Fists hardened and clenched, little signs of retaliation sprung up in him like dusty tumbleweeds on a hot summer day. A cold draft seeped through the elongating chamber; it simply kept going. When the heck were they gonna run into a dent in the halls? What about that creepy ghost girl from classroom... what was it... 4-A, right, 4-A. When did that go down? When would that go down? Did he mess up? What'd he mess up with?

Behind him, lumbering quickly to catch up, soon by his side and still irritatingly that snitch of space taller, Yoshiki softly admitted, "I'm getting a little freaked out here..." His dark orbs had gone hazy, reopened but weak, his grip on Pippy tight. The seismo, oblivious to the pressure applied, simply sat, like a rock or something.

Then he did that wheeze again. _Eeeeeeee... ee-eeeeeeee..._ As if he had to sneeze and it kept splintering between getting out and staying in, he didn't quite hit it.

 _EEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!_

His voice echoed like no other. It fractured, and split, like glass.

He'd hit it; he couldn't stop. Pippy flailed, tossing himself into harm's way and out of the unconscious, huggable hold Yoshiki'd held so smoothly, and flinging his head back, beads of tears in his eyes, he cried out again. _EYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaahhHHAAAAHAAAAAaaaaaaaa..._

Blooming into that massive seismo form, sauropod elongated and gigantic back arced out, he didn't quite make that, either, and in his submitting of size the earth crumbled below him, and with a _sqUELCh_ , Pippy fell. As hard as he trained his beady, brown orbs, Joe didn't see what happened. Just the _whoosh_ of someone right there, right beside him, warmth throbbing and expended outwards from his cold, miserable figure, and then no more. Just like that: no more. A blink and he could've missed it.

A living body, right there, now no more.

Soon to be joined in separate joints of this unholy realm by the pull and collapse of floorboards creaking, groaning, peeling back into submission and allowing the ample body of a tall, fair-colored man in orange curls to lose himself as well. Just like that, another tortured soul missing and gone within the hidden fissures. Yoshiki took a step back.

"G-gyah... G-G-God... what the hell just happened..?" His face went slack, color bright in his cheeks. Even the darkness in his eyes shot pure and bright. His body, flinching back, covered in black, crumpled with the motions of his three layers of shirts topped by the jacket and his pants in their underlying layer of movement as well, until he sat, stunned, feeling slapped by foolishness. "J-Jo—JOE! WHERE ARE YOU NOW?!"

No response.

Obviously.

Replays rewound back in his mind. He recalled events so tantalizingly similar to him, hanging straight in his face and rotting a much more rancid scent right there, so oblique it hurt, but he couldn't connect with those fuzzy bits and it was driving him to _hell._ If this thing was hell, he didn't know what kind of satanic rift he'd caught his mental capacity into. But it repeated and it twitched in him, and he knew it, that these sorts of shit had happened before.

Many times. So many times. Too many times. Years—decades. Many decades. Hesitantly: centuries? It could've been. He couldn't tell. His mind, numb and thick with cotton, only saw them. Memories. Tentative at first like he was lapping at a stream, just on the brink of falling in and drowning through a sea larger than he could ever imagine.

So it sat there. And he lapped at those ideals, and he knew they were there. And he knew this wasn't his first time here, oh, far from it. This was just the first time it'd be... it'd be different. As Yoshiki turned, all the gentle, something crumpled beneath his motion and he fished it out: a ball of mushy paper. A little scrap of it. Angrily he tossed it over the edge, tacking a cuss word with it as it fell and shook himself to stand as something cold and red tightened among his throat and he glimpsed down and caught the eye of a red spirit.

That goddamned girl.

Below layers thwarting of bedrock, on hard-packed dirt floors cracked in the walls with railroad tracks of support beams, scattered and limp in some areas, leaving bits of crumbling brown in the road's wake. No more distinguishes permeated the ground, azure and black alike. Just gritty, dark dirt. Hard-packed, relatively tidy, not patterned with holes, for sure. Hesitantly, the man lifted himself from a pounding headache and the ground, somehow clinging to an enrolled ensemble of humanity that pounded in his heart. Shaking out his hair, any sand-like particles lodged in him effectively lost, chocolate brown eyes surveyed and moved.

Soon he'd become flanked by a female. Joe didn't move around to look at her or anything, but from the glimpses he'd collected by simple maneuvering and her flanking, like some lonely ghost, showed off short, brown curls—like his but maybe some bouncier, also longer of course—which were meagerly held back by something that was flashy and pink. Her face pale, a little reddened with either anger or tears or some strong emotion, her arms wrapped over her stomach secure, he didn't know what to make of her. She had this deep green skirt and a mainly white long-sleeve shirt that kinda looked bubbly, and a green flap followed behind her sailor suit, secured by this red bandanna thing.

Shrugging, he continued on, and the girl followed.

The uneasiness from prior choked around his neck. Joe thought he was actually wearing a necklace until his hand brushed by the sensitive area and... nothing, really. While he was busy fiddling with his throat, this other girl showed up, too, also with the green pleated skirt and the bubbly white shirt and the bandanna and the flap thing, only she had paler skin and greenish hair pulled up by a silk, white bow. Her face was constricted, more sensitive and confused and heartbroken.

And, of course, a third trotted into their ensemble, rounding out their strange team. Joe really, really wasn't sure what to make of this whole thing. He just patted at the hat on his head and hoped he was doing something right. Anyway, as guessed, that girl had the bandanna, and the shirt, and the skirt, and the flappy thing. Her hair, more brown again, pleated down around her, and something purple glinted about her nose: oh, glasses. Duh. She was noticeably thicker around than the other girls. Made him wonder why the first two were so skinny around the waist in the first place—

 _Skurch._ Something foul and red on his shoe. Wincing, Joe picked up the pace and plowed into more of the sort, his teeth grinding closer until grated bone on bone the more squishy things he hit. The three girls pattering behind him were fanned out enough that if one person didn't hit something, one or the other two certainly had to. And due to his wide gait that now looked ugly and clumsy, Joe hit everything that impeded.

Somewhere ahead, a door slapped open and stopped further movement. Those three girls—teenagers like Yoshiki, by the looks of it—quickly streamed right into the opening on the right, but it took the poor orange-haired guy a moment to gain his bearings and, well, he followed this time, to which the heavy, metal-rimmed opening flapped close.

 _DUNNK._

Oh. Bad idea. The uneasiness unceremoniously tightened. Joe gagged at it and shook himself. Sucked in a breath. He trained his eyes on a splotch of brown mushing toward red on the dirt floor and didn't leave it. His hands tightened on the handles that'd locked in place. He didn't move, but the footprints of those girls patterned and they surely did. Confusions and whispers shrouded them; they were probably friends. A bunch of female friends at some perilous hoedown like this.

He didn't move, but a pair of shadows ensconced upon the room, sending shrieks full of shock and pure terror into those three females. The smaller, cuter one spoke up first in a bout of cheerfulness that kicked Joe in the chest; he struggled to stay stuck and guard-like in formation: "Ee, hee hee! Are you girls ready to _die again?"_ He didn't feel confident in much and especially not with questioning anything, but oh geez, she sounded happy about that. Immediately that little girl smacked into his memories, but Joe just wrapped his finger around it, not all that sure what to do. He stood and, quickly borrowing a hand, flipped his hat over his eyes. He felt like he wasn't gonna enjoy what happened next. His jacket, black and bold and oh so comforting, bent around him and felt warm, but he'd rather have a friend close by to share the feeling with.

It'd be nicer to have friends in a place like this. But for now, he was alone. And in all honesty, it didn't prick him really. Joe didn't mind. He wasn't the kind to get so pulled over by those emotions: even as the school tried to invoke such provocative reactions in a place where they usually didn't summon. Either way, he did have Yoshiki, and prolly the rest of his gang, too, so that was a matter of something.

"UUWAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHH!" Some sorta... starting signal? Either way, the thick, tightened, deep screech of something creepily inhumane came crashing down like filth and the bigger shadow shifted and one of the girls fell down thick and smudged, messy, gunky. An overpowering stench streamed a waterfall down his throat and left him wincing to himself, the tang of blood just cruising down his esophagus and infecting him inside and out.

"Guuh... guuuuuuuuhhh..."

"Good boy."

"GYUUHWWWAAAAAHHHHAAAAAHHHHHWAAAAHHHH!" And down was demoted the next. Joe stayed frozen in position, not particularly moving, not feeling disinterested but mostly a little fleck of disgust. A kind of dot splattering upon him. As the man chucked and chucked and cut down upon that second female, her silk bow terminated beyond repair, the smaller shadow began to shake and squeak with a frightful amount of excitement. She sounded possessed, with all the joy she was eking out of.

Dancing, squealing in circles, she began a hysterical sort of lyric.  
"Chop, chop chop  
Dead, dead, dead  
Kill her now! Kill her now!  
I want to see her dead, now!  
Chop, chop, chop  
Dead, again!  
Kill her now! Kill her now!—"

Whatever was supposed to finish that pretty little song of hers was split by a gooey burst of laughter, like spontaneous giddiness and squealing. "I can't wait until she dies agaaaaiiiiiin!" crowed that creepy thing. Joe began to miss Dina.

Somehow, even though he was on the other side of the room and had his head bowed over, the little girl had her eyes trained on him, and he felt it. This old geezer and the little girl had definitely been the pair that busted him out of the cabinet with the intentions to kill him. Who knew—maybe they were the reason he'd been in there in the first place. He just had this vague thought that these forces weren't to be taken lightly. Not at all. And she was pointing her jaw right out at him and speaking at him. Him. He didn't know what that was about, wasn't sure how to feel besides a little threatened. "You see?! You seeeeeeeee?! They just keep dying, because we're all fucked here! We're all trapped, now! Because Kishinuma Yoshiki and all of his friends won't die already, so we're all fucked!" And she leaped onto something just out of his vision and pranced about it.

"But maybe you can help them, eh? Maybe you can do something."

Something tiny and cold lurched, burying gelid fingertips into his neck and tugging the man right into that little girl's gray face and slimy-haired person. "You don't belong here, you know," she whispered, like it was their little secret. "And Dina doesn't belong here, too. And Rupert didn't, but now he's dead, so it doesn't really matter right now."

Her gums split and laughter encased him in a spray of spit. "But does _anything_ really matter _now?_ What's the point, _now?_ We're just all fucked, aren't we? And now you get to be in here too! Yes, you, and all of your new friends! Dina gets to be in here too! Doesn't she, _dollll~?_ "

Joe didn't know what to say; he'd gone numb, cold, speechless. His mind lacked the criteria he needed right now. "Do you know what Tsukasa would do in this situation? Do you?" Back to whispering. Back to their little secret. The paralyzed pard decided not to mention that he had not a clue what this Tsukasa thing was about or what was going on, really. He just sort of listened. "Good!" Cold nails drove down his spine. "Me neither! I sure hope you all die! That'd be really, really fun!"

He drowned out of all means and lost feeling.

Something hazy shook at him, like a shred of conscience that hadn't gone to the chumps. When Joe woke up on the ground this time, he found himself sitting rump-down upon this blackened walkway of floorboards. Cold chills seeped up through him, and warmth depleted rapidly. The breath billowing from his lips drew cold and white, as well as those lips hinting toward an icy blue. His head lifted, and he caught onto a pale, pale face hanging down from strands upon strands of tangled, black hairs covered in red sinews.

Just hanging there. Frozen in space, time, and the continuum. Nothing stirred within the girl. Orange hair billowed loosely about her, and she just hung there, looking so frail and alone with her arms spread out limp to collect upon nothing, and auburn orbs staring out into his eyes, but hers were glassy and she didn't see him, did she? The coat draped upon her, completely unmarred in status, easily remained its recognized red.

As more as more realizations dawned and stabbed into him, Joe's heard thrummed harder and black fell as chunks into his vision. "Dina?" He asked it softly, not like a question to any of her entity but to ask her if she was okay. "Dina?" Did she answer? No, she did not answer. Joe couldn't tell but she was completely incapable of answering, mostly as he didn't see much but that face, and those eyes, and how much he wanted to break the cold silence in those eyes and watch them bleed of life.

Did they bleed? No, they did not bleed. Not in the slightest.

Soon enough her face grew colder and haunted Joe's vision, and he stayed still on the earth, and he grew very gelid very easily. His bones, cold and marred, his heart, ripped from his chest, his mind and body altogether unstable and he labeled a harm, a hazard, that could be potentially dangerous, scary... bad. Yes, bad. Very bad. Oh, yes, bad bad bad.

A finger rose and cut through one of the eyes.

 _Sssshhhlllluck._

Did they bleed? No, they did not bleed. Not in the slightest. His breath fell. Not in the slightest—ightest—i-ii.

No. His finger rose to his lips. No. It settled onto his own eye. No. It tore in. No.

It did not bleed either, for it was a cold eye. A frigid eye. Somewhat spongy, but otherwise completely useless.

…

 **WRONG END**

 **:3 Hi, readers. You're probably wondering what just happened. Well... that was a wrong end as you can plainly see. Heh... Like the games... I mean, they added wrong ends for a reason, no? So I decided... EY. WHY DON'T I ADD A COUPLE? X3 Why? You'll have to see.**

 **So! Can you guess what led Joe onto the wrong end route? I didn't make it _too_ obvious, but I'm sure if you poke around it can be pretty easy to tell. X3 I don't think I'll do that many wrong ends, but they'll happen, I'm sure.**

 **If you can't tell what brought Joe to this fate, stick around. ;3 You just might see in the next chapter~**

 **Okay I'm going to go revise this chapter as quickly as possible so I can get my poor heart to stop pounding and get this thing over with thanks bye**


	7. He was Mistaken

**Joe: Feller, do go on. I'm feeling outright uneasy, sittin' round in all this anticipation... -sighs-**

 **Me: You stabbed your eye out, bruh. And it was like ICE. OR GLASS. What does that mean?  
**

 **Joe: It means I done messed up.**

 **Dino: WHY DON'T I GET TO STAB OUT MY OWN EYE? WHY DOES EVERYONE ELSE GET TO DO ALL THE COOL STUFF?**

 **Yoshiki: -harshly takes his shoulders- You don't want to be in that situation.**

 **Me: Heh. Anyone who's played Corpse Party knows how much turd he's gone through.**

 **Dino: Can I please be in your place I want your lif—**

 **Yoshiki: -slaps him away, steering him by his face-**

Chapter Seven: He was Mistaken

This place gave him some mean heebie-jeebies. Forking his gaze over each of the rows of cabinets—three in total, two jammed to his left of the sink and one leaning to the wall by the right of it—he could tell that some of the shelves, musty as they were, had smaller rows embedded in them, of bottles. And those bottles all mostly had the same texture of dust, but two: one in the left cabinet, which he easily creaked open with a crook of his arm, slashing out to the left as an opening, gleamed brightly. Peering at it, Joe found speckled bubbles gently popping about in it, and the cool, crisp look of water swirled around inside the petite, relatively clean bottle. Joe quickly pocketed this one in his jacket, then turned to that third cabinet on his right of the sink, which happened to be colored a putrid gray made to look like a container taped to some pipe works. Didn't smell all that fine, either.

Like vivosaur dung. Fresh vivosaur dung. Only worse and had hints of something like ammonia. Ugh, ammonia. He gagged a little.

" _...ungh..."_

A sudden yawn seized through Joe's jaws, and he blinked through what felt like dusty eyes that had retired from life for a moment. Everything pounded down on him in a wave of angst, a bath of summery sickness, and it took a few moments to gain his bearings. Joe brushed at his head and found it barren of a certain hat, and he pouted toward himself and the cabinets on the walls he lost focus of, wondering why his curls had been left so barren as of now. He shook them out slowly and sighed, confuzzled beyond the usual. "What... Darn-tootin', what just happened..?" Betwixt another yawn sawing past his teeth he blinked and felt a shadow behind his eyes. "Where... am I... again?" Western voice receding as he spilled back, a word hissed by his ear—

 _Ss—ss-sssss-ss—sss-selfish._

"Gak!"

He stumbled forward, spurs dangling precariously over cut wood with an arsenal of splinters the faint hue of azure: anything to get away from that. It seemed to neatly fold his bearings back into place, creasing his breeches and returning them nicely to the sound dresser of his mind. Joe then recalled he was in that weird infirmary and there were bottles and glancing strangely, warped around the room in a dazed orbit, the cool glass of a swanky bottle in his hand returned as did feeling. A pale-then-fair hand set up the assumed bottle of somewhat-musty holy water, his palm a stage, and the pard nodded to himself decidedly. "Mmmkay. Looks like we're done here."

His sweet western slang patrolled the lines of his sight and this room in general, snapping nowhere and thoroughly coating a silent and freaky chamber with a very fine and dandy substance called peace. Another puff of breath removed from his jaw held just to the hinges of agape, and with no such tallyho, the dazed adult stepped over cracks in the floor and the stains lurking over the ground, curls bouncing all shiny and orange in his face as he maneuvered left of the aligned white cots and exited that strange place. It became noticeably easier to breathe in the adjacent hallway, which Joe found particularly pleasant. He nodded to the boy who still had his eyes closed and head rested against the wall, which somehow felt assuring to the pard that something was sound and swell with the nexus he was apparently stuck in.

Somehow, this whole hoedown amounted to a sort of safety. Fine and dandy. His chocolate orbs surveyed the halls and came up empty of sore sights. "Nice," he murmured, which evidently caused the blonde delinquent kid-friend to stir. Dark orbs glinted back at the shorter adult and he mumbled, "You're weird, Joe," in a more croaky, more tired slang. As usual; as he always did. The pard smirked softly to himself in his fair-colored skin with the gentle pink hues and the curly orange length of hair idly bouncing about his head. It still felt weird to see that brown boulder donning his special and floppy hat, but did it help him...

"Well, c'mon, now. Stop standing and staring at your beloved hat or you'll scare the... the... goddammit. What was he again?"

Another smirk curled up Joe's lip. "A seismo. Shrunken, fer his size. He's not usually so li'l 'n cuddly, lemme say."

The boy smirked back. His dark-watery orbs flashed. "Then what's unshrunken look like?"

"Ya better hope the first time ya see it it's in a wide, open area, pardner." Gently accepting the shaken, silent seismo still grappling onto that bright candle via Yoshiki via his girlfriend, Joe nodded affirmatively. "It ain't fun, gettin' stepped on by a hundred-somethin' long seismo, and who-counts-it something high."

"You don't say, Joe," timidly went the blonde back. His eyes burned a little at the thought of how impeccably humungous this tiny, vulnerable chap could go to, and how that whole stretching thing even worked, and why something pocket-sized could change shape so easily. Heck, everyone didn't really know.

Joe shared with this silent curiosity. "Beats me, boy. It's just what they do. Like us; we've got our traits, 'n they have theirs. Good enough?"

"Not really." But Yoshiki shrugged and caught the silvery, glassy bottle from the cusp of Joe's rapidly-deteriorating grip now lost to the brown flesh that made up Pippy the chap whose shuddering form didn't give much wiggle room. Puffing out a sad breath, Joe felt somewhat perturbed to see that sorrowful face and doll-like orbs. He called the girl he considered his daughter "doll," but he never actually considered her to be so frozen with emotion. Just cute, like, well, the child toy. Not cold and stiff and this glazed, this sadistically disconnected with the world of the living, or whatever nexus this had to be considered. Still... so fragile: a flower popping out in the middle of winter had nothing on this plush-sized sauropod. This pard didn't find it all that pathetic—he'd grown older in experience making him all wise and stuff—but... a sad thing, simply. Like this flower had lost its beautifully blooming buds to the cold darkness approaching, a bitter, bitter cold, in favor to that than the sweet heat that should have made it big and pretty, swollen with beauty. If it ever once had a golden heart supplying it on the inside—golden stem, golden whatever those flowers had in the middle of their rough spots—that had gone black.

A sad thing.

Gently shaking out the curls framing his face, the sad thing stayed and swirled in Joe's mind idly. He technically didn't do much about it, not quite lifting the broom and sweeping out the corners of his head where it stuck, but let it simmer, and he sighed softly. Like it'd always been this way, the blonde pummeled his way past the pard and the seismo, the minute bottle of holy water tinkling in his combined palms and himself leading his way back down the coil of stairs. Joe dunked the hat down over Pippy's amethyst eyes to be perfectly certain those five corpses wouldn't have to be seen, or heard, if that little scenario played out again—gee, thanks Yoshiki. Down and around that brown, wooden stair where the floorboards eeked creepily like they had voices and opinions, too, until that neatly-sitting quintuplet of a tea party with the four girls and the boy that looked like a girl, including that Yuzuki with the dress, Joe lumbered on.

His thick, brown boots with the long rows of fringe made thicker clomping noises with each shuffle of a foot that he made. His identity felt particularly imprinted upon those creepy wooden halls. A chill cleanly knit into him and squirmed around for a shiver, its search eventually fruitless. Joe, unlike Pippy, didn't work like that. Emotions couldn't control him like that, and they rendered, on their own, unable to strike him down and make him, too, look like a life-size doll with freaky eyeballs.

More casual loping; soon it would be over with. Round a bend. Step away from the hole punched in wood. Straight to the left. Get lost: follow Yoshiki's black-clad figure with white-hot blonde hair. Hey, he was practically like a candle himself. Eying the notion, the pard glimpsed about and allowed his gaze to simmer on that white stick of warmth a pair of brown paws held close to, nigh squishing the tepid creation in areas, causing a waxy _ssquirrrt._ He didn't hear much of anything from the hollow chap, and this was as close as anything else. Placated with him, Joe satisfactorily patted the brown-scaled head and swiped his hat back onto his own. Man, he liked that hat.

It felt righteous to crown that mess of orange curls. Curlier than Dina's, he mused; hers looked more like thick, silvery-orange waves. Then the adult shook his head gruffly and reprimanded to himself that no, Dina wasn't here, and thus it didn't matter all that much. What mattered here happened to be a ragtag gang of two other boys: the broken vivosaur and the delinquent kid. For all he knew, his technical-daughter had nothing to worry about as she and all of her buddies like her boyfriend and her vivosaurs had safe, untouched souls. Even an adult could hope and dream.

That single word from the stain in the infirmary flecked in his brain like black polka-dots trying to eat him: _s—sssss-s-ss—ss—sss-sss-s—sss-selfish._ And again. _Selfish._ Again. _Selfish; selfish; selfish._ It meant something: it had to mean something. That stain felt like living, breathing flesh for a moment there, but whatever the cause, it... meant... something. Real emotions and feelings pumped through that single word and warmed him like a strong cuppa joe: it meant something.

But he had other problems to face right now. Didn't matter. Didn't have much of anything to do with the current situation. Loping along casually behind the kid who really knew his way around this warped junk depot, Joe felt as casual as he'd ever gotten since the sleepiness wore off and the first roadblock set in: that, being, the cabinet. And the little girl's face—

 _the smaller shadow began to shake and squeak with a frightful amount of excitement she sounded possessed with all the joy she was eking out of_

Blinking furiously, the images swimming before his very own chocolate-coated orbs died back down, like the open flames in a spit of fire, and they didn't seem keen on leaping back up at him again. Sighing, plucking uncomfortably at the boulder-like creature billowing cold in his arms, he suddenly felt grateful that that little girl, whatever she might be, hadn't taken his beloved jacket. It durn helped when you held a dwindling soul in your arms.

Not that Joe liked the experience or expected it or anything: it'd just happened. But he felt all the more alert and prepared with that thick, gigantic black fabric cut up, sizing him much-too-largely—perfectly—coating upon him. Kinda matched good ol' Yoshiki, though his was shorter and in no way blocked any view of his black, lined pants. Joe felt a tiny bit more fond of his jeans: what could he say? Jeans were cool.

It was with a flurry of movement and action that Joe managed to catch up with Yoshiki. He needed to get his head out of the clouds and focused on the overall mission again; usually distraction didn't pop up so easily, but man, this place was some twisted pile of squikwash—quite the emotional and physical sty. Joe gave a small shake of his head, scattering curls and bouncing bits of hat alike, and deemed himself keen for this time, in the least. Placing an authoritative, fair hand on the other kid's shoulder, scooting closer to him and his annoyingly just-barely taller status, Joe and Yoshiki glared into the oncoming door hovering just in front of their faces. If they breathed hard enough, they could fog up the paper-like residue covering the top half like a window screen. Perhaps fog up the window too, was it not busted like the line of glass just to the side of the room. "Damn, this place is giving me some serious creeps."

Curiously, the pard cocked his head to the side and faced slightly-tan kid-friend. "I dunno what's wrong with it," he muttered in his usual, throaty—accented—brim, and snorted, "but there's something wrong with it." Joe shrugged; as helpful as this place got. "I swear, as creepy as it is..." A worn-out, patched-thin sigh connected these next few, tired words. "Goddammit... I've been here before... I've been here before a lot more times than I wanted to... and I don't understand why..." Angrily shaking his head, he voiced his opinion like he always did: "I don't understand why, goddammit!"

Joe stifled a snicker as the realization sprung upon him that he used that curse word a lot. It suddenly struck him as funny, he didn't know. Pulling together his supposedly authoritative presence and working up his more serious self, Joe replied softly. "I don't understand why, either. A lot of whys. Durn, there's too many ta keep track of. So many reasons and questions this place jus' keeps dumpin' down on us." He tittered gently to a boy who—taller—gave off such childish flair now. "I feel it too, boy. I feel it too. This place is crazy, and... ya just feel like ya haven't been outta here for a long time. What is it... repeat? Are you stuck here on loop er somethin'?"

That little girl's face flashed into his eye like lightning. Striking a bone, perhaps? Heck, he didn't know. He was pretty lost too, though Yoshiki at least knew his way around this crazy place. That was nice. And... supposedly the reason had to do with this as well. "I just feel like this room has been visited by me and my friends a lot more times than we'd like; hell, this entire hole has been visited by us more times than we'd like! Well, they mean a lot to me... so it drives me insane they have to be in here too, but I guess it's also good. It means I'm not very alone." And Joe nodded to that: "Hard to be alone when ye got eight other souls with ya." They both nodded softly.

"It is." Tuckered, Joe let out a small puff of breath and released one hand on Pippy to rub at his eyes. _It is._ He agreed quietly.

He'd heard Yoshiki call them—like... some family of sorts? It could get bad betwixt them but in the end... a lot connected them. Apparently that included the school. And... however long these poor kids'd been there. Wait, not just kids. The teacher lady. She was on their side, too. Snorting, he saw her kinda like him. Kid friends; all that business.

Was Joe here because _he_ and _these guys_ like Pippy just somehow happened to be connected, too? Did that... even work out right? Tittering, Joe clasped the doorknob and, glancing over to his buddy, whipped it open. Before that red, fiery soul could say _ember_ , she was out. That tiny bottle of holy water cascaded upon her like a small but mighty waterfall and completely got the thing reeling, smoking, all of that good stuff that happened to poor ghosts who stood in the way of the mighty Joe Wildwest and his scary, delinquent-looking kid friend, and the seismo shared betwixt them. Okay, maybe he had some crazy connection, but right now, that... didn't matter. Gulping down a spare breath or two, his fair cheeks puffed with air as he gently placed Pippy on the floor after pacing over and around that poor girl's smudged corpse collapsed there on the wood so... disdainfully. Shame, it was. Shame. Tittering to some swollen encore for all his dead ghost friends, his head rocked as he planted the seismo firmly and locked eyes with him, the candle shadowing over each of their faces.

"Pippy, can ya wait here while we check this place out?"

For some tedious, elongated seconds: no response. In the long run, sweat beaded at his lips where the flame on the white pillar of hope flickered closely to him and kept giving off waxy hues smelling faintly of petals on flowers with a capture of perfume on belay, and then: _O-ok...kay..._ He could hardly believe it. The air in his lungs came punched out a messy puzzle, and Joe simply looked at that kid for a moment.

He whispered gently: "Okay," and turned to his left to actually face this creepy chamber.

First thought: this classroom didn't look like the other classrooms. Second thought: long, like a sauropod's neck—really long. _Really_ long. Third thought: why was Yoshiki moving so quickly away from the foot of the room in such strong stride? Some names peeled off of his lips as quick, bolstering steps pedaled him onward. Screeching beyond hope they wouldn't be someone he knew. Apparently they weren't, because his gait slowed and relaxation molded him into a softer, gentler complex. So focused on his kid-friend, right there in the flesh, that mattered, that stood too close to the edge, just like him, just like Pippy: Joe didn't even realize someone stood just by his shoulder. Took him a few moments to recognize a faint warmth of a glittering, red hand on him.

"Hey," he grunted, attempted to shrug back, do something. That didn't cause any significant movement: only the obvious notion that this thing despised the idea of releasing him, of even allowing him a hinged momentum. For Joe took a step in his knee-high boots and tugged, and his shoulder stayed glued, and so the rest of his body followed suit. "Oyyy," he grumbled a bit louder, like that blonde delinquent of his might. Not one with a fuse to burn, he shrugged and grunted, gentler: "Hello?"

"Don't you realize how rude it is to pour holy water all over a poor, traumatized girl?" Oh. Weird. That ghost apparition, like a bad show, hadn't gone off and, like... what would it do? Oh, good point.

Joe had no idea. "Uh... sorry?" He blinked sharply in the direction of the teenager further away who was poking at a corpse and not paying attention to this situation at hand. It was like the feeling in his left shoulder, tingly at best, had come to ebb away. That girl had a durn killer grip that'd sack him was he not careful. "What was I... supposed to do?" he proposed. Again, soft. This was a female. Maybe it'd help.

"Like... I dunno, weirdo..." She had this peppy, spicy tone that curdled at him wildly, something Joe could easily brush off but still would pick at, examine, and find intriguing. She sounded nothing like Dina, for sure; that girl held a quiet virtue, and a wicked stutter. "Like, you'd, like... Appease me? Duh? Ever heard of that? Appeasing ghosts?" His cheeks itched somewhat, but the adult didn't feel all that pinned and prodded by her questions. He bet Yoshiki would. He looked like the short-tempered, touchy type. Not this pard, though. Ain't gonna wrangle him up in his spurs.

So, with a loping grin, he responded dutifully. "Well, sorry, ma'am. I don't know much'a this occult stuff, or this place, really. I durno if I belong here. I durno what a school is, by golly. I didn't until I was lassoed on into this dangerous two-step."

"Uh... what?" Another grin squirmed on his face, and Joe's eyes gleamed somewhat.

"See, lass..." No other way to put it. "I'm not from anywhere round here. Whatever the doo-hickery ya came from, I ain't from anywhere near that. Not unless you've seen a vivosaur." The curious tugging at said shoulder, releasing a small break of feeling in the cusp of arm and torso, egged him on. What was a vivosaur? "Oh, like the little feller over there." A nod toward Pippy. "See... neither of us are from anywhere round here. Ain't... never been in a strange place like this. Sure, it's prolly really freaky and strange for you, but at least you had... and have... friends by your side, and you faintly recognize this place. Me? None'a that. None."

"Like... you're not from anywhere around here?" Yeah, basically; a fair head embedded with crisp curls nodded. "At all... hmm... that's really, really, really creepy, you know. Like... ugk. If you're not... from somewhere normal like home... then... like... are you with... with... w-with _them?"_ He snorted.

Chocolate orbs flashing, the trapped adult added airily, "Watch what yer callin' normal 'ere." His own tone, much more calm and trustworthy-enough in the situation, palled in comparison to this flustered, confused, and loud girl. She sounded around Yoshiki's age, now that he thought of it: perhaps some younger, but a precise area. "And... whaddaya mean... 'them?' 'r they some kinda voodoo hex whatsit, too?"

That girl just started spurting out questions all over again. "Like, what? Aren't you an adult? Are you... actually, like, with them? Adults never ever come around here except for that stubborn one in that stupid loop, it's really annoying, you know? Like that boy back there"—a hand waggled aimlessly toward a certain blonde someone—"like what's up with them? Why won't they die already? It's, like, stupid. I'm a newer victim, but they, and all of the idiots who died in their time when they didn't, they're, like... they keep dying. We just watch. It's freaking creepy and awkward—as— _heck!"_

Anyone else lost? Joe was lost. He idly wondered, was someone else in his position, that they'd be lost too. That would make him feel a little better. The questioning and simple rambles began tacking into one another like a sort of pattern, and eventually, Joe felt more secure in the thought that she was finishing up and would hurry up and end her prophecy of confusing words soon. And then, perhaps, he'd be able to get some sense with her, and maybe understand this place a little more. He had no hope to figuring out why he and Pippy—and those people with Pippy—and whoever else may have showed up via the world where their people reigned—had ever been brought into this mess in the first place, but he could at least try to get out of here with Yoshiki and those eight friends of his he sounded obsolete in saving. And... those people of Pippy's, too. And himself.

Hearing those groups of those knowing one another sent a throbbing ache shot through his soul. It felt like someone he knew dearly—no, multiple someones—had been in danger, perhaps was at that very pinpoint of an instant... or perhaps the danger had... ended... them. It flashed before his mind a claw of lightning in a messy, stuffed burl of thunder: death. Killed. Did someone die... when someone died... these ghosts, yeah, they hung around, but it was beside the point: _did someone DIE..._

They didn't come back.

Ever.

Joe didn't know how much he liked that idea.

To imagine that people he had strong, mutual feelings attached to—his technical daughter; his kid-friends; vivosaurs, even—that their rotting bodies of flesh could be mucking around here, their souls now outside of them and their lives over... Oh. Oh no. No, he didn't know how much he didn't like that idea, but it curled something strong up in his throat. Stank like early mildew hanging in the air. Those thoughts, and others, all the same and sparky and stabbing at him, coursed into his body from that point where his shoulder was capped. As the girl's own fiery tone died down, for a moment, Joe didn't rightly know what to say.

Until... "Ah... This place's weirder'n I thought... I'm rightly tuckered by this." He didn't have much a clue what to use for his words, but that happened, and it felt okay. Not too rusty or rude, he hoped. But just an idle hope. It'd be alright if the girl was offended somehow; some girls did that. They got offended. Easily. "Hrrmm... I'm guessin'... so Yoshiki an' his buddies're special'r somethin'? They're... gifted, er somethin', in this place..? Different than you and I?" It... sounded right. That sounded right.

"Well, like, I dunno. They just keep redoing this place and coming back, which is really tiring for all of us that came after them; the ones before don't really mind helping them all over again, but, ugh, we do! I don't like having to deal with this a lot, it's stupid!" Joe determined he wasn't going to find some useful and conceptual information from this girl. He'd gotten some tangled knot adding to Yoshiki's problems, and apparently had a tidbit over appeasement and that you did that with ghosts, or something. So he didn't have nothing, but...

Plucking the leftover bottle of holy water from the ground, not really sure what else to do about it, he flicked the shard of glass still gently coated in the substance as it flung through the dead female. He mumbled something about appeasement and placation as her body shrank back from him and gave a few vivosaur-like hisses as it retreated, then left him in the retrospecting peace of a room filled with males.

"So, uh, kid? 'dya find anythin' worth it over in the corner of the room?"

A blonde head stuck out around said corner. Joe examined that walkway further; pretty much a regular hallway of wood but accompanied, on the wooden wall, by an elongated—and he meant _elongated—_ chalkboard, the same crusty greenish texture as the normal-looking ones from the other classrooms in the school. Past that was the corner Yoshiki'd turned, alongside a small cube of space where he found that dead body. "I just found some corpse! Nothing all that serious!" he hollered back.

"Oh? Great!"

It sounded weird to appease toward "some corpse" as "great," but hey, he had to take in account what he found... then again... "Oy, what's it look like?"

"Nn?! Oh, right, you might recognize it!" Still shouting, of course. His heavy accent and grinding speech reverberated throughout the stretched hallway of a class. Blinking, the adult in back with their silent vivosaur caught a few islands of desks and smirked to himself when he saw representations that resembled the isles on the world he came from. "Uhh... red jacket!" Oh. Oh almighty Lassie. "And... a dark face!" All worries cascaded out the window. "The jacket's got some real gaudy flowers on it, and, damn, that's a lot of blonde hair. Bah! She could be my sister, practically!" Yep; Joe had nothing to worry about. He smirked at himself for the sudden seize in his chest. Wow. Wow, boy, wow. Calm yourself in the saddle, he reprimanded softly with a titter, scooping up a seismo and meeting up with the black-clad kid-friend close enough to the middle. "Anything else?"

The pard offered one of his trademark shrugs. "Nothin' much. There's desks everywhere, but that don't mean anything. Aah... you didn't see anythin' worth our time over there..." His slur of western speech paused for a moment, rewound. "Well, that red ghost came back and got all rowdy at me with her hand on my shoulder nice 'n hard so I was right stuck, told me that I should've appeased her instead of sprayed holy water all over her. Then she was downright blabbing about you and your buddies and it got confusing and I stopped listening. The end."

"That's kinda odd," he offered back.

"I didn't think you'd be so popular, boy."

"How so?" The air of a question: with a bite.

"Well, I mean, lookicha. How d'you expect everyone to be all daisies and sunshine on ya if ya got that kinda attitude? Face the sunrise: you look like a delinquent. And you... just.. try to walk me through this."

"Oh, shut up, Joe." He took a swipe at the hat.

"Ey, you don't touch my hat, kid!"

"That's the first adult-like thing you've said this entire time, you know!"

"I durno how to take that."

"Then don't."

Dual smirks hovering upon their faces, the relatively mature duo took back to their brisk walk and into the gelid air of the outside, or outside enough, in the nexus. As they explored further out into the depths, the curdling stench of hot, metallic blood erupted and splattered into the hallway. They saw no murderer, no murdered, just smelt it. All over. Coating the air like it was the air, so technically, with each breath he took, the pard's innards stunk more of somebody else's demise. How delicious; his face curled and he ambled on his toll of a walk beside the ever-moving blonde-haired boy who was annoyingly just _that_ much taller than his elder.

Their group loped up a set of stairs after crawling up, simply up, that second floor hall without creeping into any doors—and passing a small number of the deceased, goodie—and around the bend, the ground went flying underneath in an inhuman shriek, crashing into itself and distancing, dancing amongst itself vaguely and tearing, roaring, into a quaking of the earth like no other. The school bashed and bashed and flogged itself like an insane, mindless human being would and added to the accumulation of scars already simmering on its wooden exterior, displaying all sorts of creepy innards below like more wood and spots of dark and the lining of wires or pipes for the uses of electricity and water: something so simple to find in this pit of burning yuck. From its ferocity, Joe and Yoshiki unceremoniously bonked into each other and suffered a mild unconsciousness, only quickly shaken back to life by a warbling seismo whose candle had splattered like ink on the floor, a waxy white stain arcing with heat and obviously not coming together soon. The white matched with the floor, now: the boards were tinted in white instead of azure. Lovely.

Once the episode ended and the stairs were thoroughly combed and climbed, Pippy became noticeably more active. He shuddered in place, purple orbs piercing where he stared and he would eke quite a squeak out of bitten, brown lips. Losing his little torch of hope had either taken a toll on him or wrought back some life, and Joe wanted the latter to be the truth, but he and his blonde buddy simply couldn't tell. In that aggravatingly inches-taller kid's hands laid the shivering bundle of cooling sauropod. And there he stayed for some time.

Rounding a bend, chocolate orbs, ahead of the group, caught a glimpse of the hallway beyond and tittered. "Ain't this a tiny little settlement jus' off the map," he muttered. Fair hands rose and clapped softly. "Wonder what's down there." He whistled.

"I dunno. Why don't you go find out?"

"Yeaaah, but I did that laast tiiime," he groaned, "with the infirmaryyy... uurrgh. Do I have to?"

Dark orbs cut at the back of Joe's crudely large hat with the horns and the face. "I've never seen an adult act so spoiled before." He was mild about it, more curious than anything, with his accent toned down a little, even. "Funny." Didn't even question the fact he was the one to explore classroom 4-A. Then it was sharp again. "Whatever. Fine. Take Pippy. I'll go if you wait here."

A miniature brown mountain whose heat only further proved this, well, lack of, grew roots in the pard's jacket-coated torso as he hugged the being toward him and a muttering teen sauntered past. He didn't step into either of the rooms he found, though he'd stop and peer at them shortly: he did that twice. Nothing much of interest zoomed by him, though really he didn't have an easy-to-catch attention span as it was. At the edge of the thick hallway, a small swatch of paper read a few carefully-whittled words, so he stopped and mumbled them aloud to himself: "'Heavenly Host Elementary School shut down due to loss of attendance and life.' Isn't that cheery? Ugh, I'm starting to sound like Joe... lessee... 'As the years passed by and more children's lives were lost from mysterious disappearances after school, even coming to entire groups of kids walking home together missing by night, the attendance and reputation of the school also dwindled, and thus left the school eventually dry of income and subject to closure.' Even more cheery—ugh, stop sounding like him, that's creepy." Shaking his head, he fell back and turned round.

"It's probably weird that I feel like I've read that a lot around this hellhole..." A short groan. "Whatever. Goddammit, I don't care... Just let us go...

A softer sigh. "We'll get over this eventually, I'm sure. Ugh, just gotta find a way out of here... which I'm sure I remember _somewhere_ , just like everything else, and I'll get over this. Maybe has something to do with that appeasement thingy..." He stopped in place suddenly, contemplating.

"I hope Joe stays with us. I think Miss Yui'd like that a lot. Plus he's not that bad. My parents were that bad. Honestly, most adults are. Ayumi'd agree... but for some reason, he just isn't..."

Realizing his random stop in the hallway, Yoshiki shook his head of somewhat-spiky blonde hair and forcefully began to close the distance between himself and his group, when a voice sifted up through the floorboards below.

 _YUUUUUKKAAAAAAA! HOLY HELL, HANG ON! YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO FUCKING DIE!_ He recognized the person addressed and his heart caught, silence for a pure second.

Joe heard something else from his position. _T-TOOORRRNNNNNNNNNNN! NOOOOOOO! DON'T YOUU DIIIEEEEEEE! DON'T LEAVE US HEREEE! WHAT ABOUT TRIKKO? Uuuuu-WAAHAAAAHHHHHHHHhhhhh..._ He didn't recognize the voice but he knew the name. Someone he knew was officially in this building and stuffed with danger. No, make that two. Torn. Trikko. Those were names. Important names. Names he could conceive all too well... and the way that female said it... it was like their lives were on the line.

The two reached each other and had a mutual agreement already planned. They didn't know that either had heard a different voice and different person, but the united significance ran like a hot spring and the pard sprung to his feet like the westerner he was and would have ran his heart out with Yoshiki did they not already have a reason to run:

that ball of a sanity-dropping vivosaur popped into life and sped down the stairs immediately.

Now there was two reasons. This was swallowed and silently accepted. _PIPPY, COME BACK!_ first cried Joe, then, _TOORRRRNNNNNNNN! TRIIKKOOOOOOO! WHERE ARE YOU!_

Yoshiki followed suit as they bombarded those stairs like madmen and made their way down as fast as they possibly could, including accidents and bruises and tripping up. Carelessness and small wounds could be ignored at the sacrifice of this to a greater good: they had four souls to find now. "PIPPY, YOU GODDAMNED PIPSQUEAK! COME BACK!" Then, "YUUKAAAAAAAAA! OYYYYYYYYYY! I HEARD YOU! CALL AGAIN; CALL AGAIN!"

This was the first time Joe'd been ever confronted with this visual taste of death—the risk that someone he knew well was about to spin out of life, and he couldn't even do anything about it but run and the flimsy hope they'd make it somehow enabled to do something. They panted and sprinted their hearts out as predicted, blood and adrenaline mixing freely inside and even the sight of old, disfigured bodies along the way as well as the occasional hole spouted no worries but the combined need to run. Downstairs and fanned out. It'd sounded as if the voices came somewhere around that second floor... They had to be around here somewhere...

Such a frenzied, unannounced plight eventually led them into the crooked-open door of the infirmary where they spilled upon the cots and, struggling to reach back up again, found that their exit had been firmly shut. That one single word scissored through Joe's mind and shredded through memory, cutting gouges and points of resemblance that tried to puncture and collect a face but as soon as he battered into the door, twas done. He sucked in a breath and banged at it, his face smooth and without line. His emotion didn't eke out. They never did. But adrenaline, that fueled him thick and heavy.

First Yoshiki splattered against the cabinets and collected anything appearing even remotely useful like chipped-down keys and dusty alcohol bottles but as he sprung for the door where his friend pounded fruitlessly the ground snapped at them and shook a deadly mess that sent cracked bottles and sharp objects cascading like a waterfall of death. Yoshiki screeched at him and yowled and pounced, sending both of them spiraling down and a vast majority of harmful items from stabbing, but a few made their mark and Joe, scowling at the floor, didn't say much, though small explosions around his torso and hat splayed out what pain must've been going on inside.

The earthquake resembled the past one, only more swift on its feet but honestly softer, as, from ringing around this accursed chamber, voices began to cheer and giggle in a frightfully childlike demeanor. Sharp, high-pitched, baby-like, effortless, stumbling over some of the words carelessly and singing their grotesque hearts out, went the children. The pard and the kid-friend waited in their hunched and desperate positions. They had to get out; they had to get out; they had to find the owners of the voices and their runt of a seismo and they had to get out of this atrocity of a chamber. Hearts pounding between their teeth and caving in upon them wildly, messily, the boys flinched with each turn and each fall and crack of each instrument and Joe winced as the adrenaline left holes where his injuries burled in like quick, snapping teeth of pain.

He let out another pain-inflicted grunt, thick and hard and juicy and the children giggled harder and ruptured all sounds with those squeals that didn't end. Nothing else but the laughter could be heard and it drove the boys, driveled them up towards peaks, little peaks of madness then sent it all down in major headaches and anguish. Peeling back at them were the floorboards and the cutting objects and those horrendous giggles, surrounded soon by some childish faces, and as he stared at them, Yoshiki, and Joe, as they stared, another word from that girl hit them. That...

 _a-appease._

They couldn't do much about it as the word split in two...

 _please me._ And again, it split...

 _please help us._

And it all ended as the doors popped open and just out of their clutches sat a round little vivosaur with stump-like paws and a long neck and tail, all the color of crumbly dirt. A fresh sort of dirt, cheery and peppery and welcoming, but still dirt. Royal-colored orbs pinched back, saw some dirtied faces and cut-up holes in skin for blood to seep through, and with an inhumane squeal, he was off. Groaning, the men lifted and trudged after him, weakly calling out his name through the entities of their minds, over and over and _over_ again. Their hearts pounded dangerously over the edge as they slowly swooned in the effects of recovery, and they leaned at one another as they shuffled.

It was a slow, empty walk that took them after the seismo. Slow and empty and futile in their efforts, as the pleaded for him to stop and he didn't, and he grew slower, and slower, and slower, as his body grew bigger, and bigger, and bigger. And it wasn't a good thing, whispered a sunrise of realization after the stars in the dark. It wasn't a good thing.

Finally, energy returned and Joe split from his friend and trounced after that vivosaur. _PIPPY, NO!_ He could only guess what lay below did his transformation to his regular size continue. _STOP! PIPPY, STOP THIS! YOU'LL ONLY BE FURTHER HARMED! STOP WHILE YOU CAN!_

Did he stop? No. He didn't hear much of anything.

Unlike how everyone else saw it, Pippy's mind was plagued with dancing shadows and what-ifs and fears that eked out of him with each jump of growth within. His mind had fallen far before anyone else knew it, and he couldn't take it: he couldn't take it here. He wanted one thing, and one thing only, and he couldn't even find it, and he knew all too well he never would because this place was cruel, and unlike how everyone else saw it, he knew all too well this place was cruel. It had eaten at him and consumed his weak little spirit as it bloomed, and without that one little thing, it easily took over him. He needed that love of others to swarm him—of a specific other—and it was missing, so that hole to darkness, always clogged, had become a doorway to death. And nothing could stop that.

Pippy didn't hear anything. He had one thought interconnecting within his body and one thought alone that coincided with everything within him, one universal stance that he understood: he was going to release himself from it all. It wasn't suicide; the madness had drove him to a breaking point, only he'd already cracked after he first entered this pit. He'd come in all alone and struggled around, squirmed, and it only took moments to find the blonde nearby and wake him, and in those moments, that was all it took.

Now here he stood, on the verge of his own extinction, not even taking it in, only seeing one thing and that it wasn't here and he needed it and he was gone. He was far, far gone.

It was so easy to die.

He never even realized how easy it was but there it was.

It was so, so easy to die.

Plain obviousness stared into his blind eyes that couldn't even see, much less tell, that it sat there like that. But it did. And Pippy felt nothing of it. Nothing at all. He didn't pant or trip up or any of that: he ran, and he grew, and he was already far too gone to care or even stop and think about his actions, about... what this release would cause him: forever. There was no escape; did he know that? Perhaps he did. But he found it an escape from his pain, a pain that never ended and couldn't end unless he found what he lacked but he couldn't do that—it wouldn't happen, it wouldn't happen, he knew it wouldn't—and this place was cruel.

Soon he swooned ever further, his spine arcing across the ceiling and rendering the entire hallway above impassable. Chunks of rotting wood, piece by piece, fell through and slew against the air and _thun-thun—thunkkkkkkkked_ against the ground like bombs that exploded in noise and tripped up anyone who wanted to save him: he couldn't be saved. No. One hundred feet; one hundred and one; one hundred and two; one hundred and—five. Higher, higher, back stretching up and body swinging forward and back and winning size for the largest vivosaur out there. The ground beneath his toes unseeded itself and began to open up, like pages in a book, pattering out and out and calling for him in the whisper of cold wind. Still wind. Dead wind.

Somewhere in front of his sightless eyes, a figure of a biped stood and pranced and attempted to jump at him but was easily stopped by a splinter of wood charging up and out and leaving its insulation, popping into holes and trapping the person: a female figure, it was. Pippy couldn't tell, couldn't feel, didn't perceive any longer, but those following him saw the woman.

He stretched just moments longer, one hundred and twelve, one hundred and sixteen, one hundred and— _CRAACCCCK._

He was no more. Just a big, ugly, empty gap in the rickety old school showed that there was something even that large standing there prior, that a soul had been there, riddled by the curse of the school and withered away into the _SLAAAMmmmmmm...ammmm...mmmmmmmmmm..._ of rumbles and crisscrossing cracks that reverberated for moments, to minutes longer. And then it became more, much more than minutes.

On the other side of the sea of void, a male slunk to the ground. Sucking in plentiful breaths with a puffy, furiously reddened face much out of his fair, a pink, complexion, he removed his thick hat and mopped at the beads of sweat, like mist, tearing and jerking down his face. Puffing at his shirt, deliberately not removing his jacket, he sat there and gasped for breath, struggling to continue his life, until it stippled and it became evident he would live. Peering across that gap in chocolate brown slits, the male observed quietly as a female who looked equivalent to his age, younger adult, peered back at him. Purple eyes. Reminded him of back home; lots of people had 'em. One of Dina's vivosaurs had 'em. He found them a little mystifying.

Still, the shock of what just happened wore down on him somewhat stronger than the girl he'd accidentally trapped alongside his... loss of life... and so Joe sat there with his legs swinging over the edge, silently in wait of the pursing Yoshiki. He could hear those blue slippers go in the distance: _pat pat pat patpatpatpatpatpatpat pat pat pat patpatpatpatpat pat patpatpat..._ Off in the distance, he was returning to his aide. Oh, sweet honey, hooo boy, yee-ha, all that celebration. Joe sat silently and stared off at the girl. She didn't look like a Yuka, and he wondered if Yoshiki would be upset by that. She had a pink long-sleeve shirt and this navy blue skirt cascading down to her knees, and a little, somewhat-stricken smile. Joe, not sure what to do, shrugged back his hat and waved it at her.

Those dark purple orbs, close to blue, sprang into a sudden submission. Her look gripped him, and he felt a little concerned... either for her or whatever she was staring at. The imprint of his kid-friend's slippers on scattered amounts of fraying wood assured she didn't just get weirded out by the look of some pard like him. Wait—did she... did she think something weird of _him_? Joe? Hesitantly, chewing at her lip, she looked like she had something pretty durn important to ask him. Something... real durn important. It was gnawing at her, as she chewed gentler on her lip.

He was about to say hi first for her when a cry sounded out from behind, outrageously loud and terrified: "JOEEEEEE! MOOOVEEE, GODDAMMIT! JUST GO BEFORE THEY HURT YOU!" All he could tell... feeling that emotion pumping in that voice, Yoshiki had to be in danger. That delinquent-looking kid-friend had danger breathing down his neck, snipping at his lifeline, and... well, he'll be durned, that ain't gonna happen to him.

"Stand tall!" he yelled, turning his head back and turning firm on his boots, plopping that hat on his head. "Stand tall, Yoshiki!"

What did he mean by that?

One thing in particular.

As the streak of black and blonde came dodging toward the hole, about to take himself and that thing out, Joe stepped and slammed past the boy who then toppled to his feet, unconscious, and stayed there: he'd be okay. The ledge, like a shoreline, gasped far enough away from that corner. Joe drove on and heard that girl screech out some wording or another, but whatever it was, it was three syllables, and it... didn't sound like "Yoshiki." Fact, it sounded a lot more like some other name. Started with a "Sue" sound for a name. He didn't outright get it so he ran and felt those cold tentacles suddenly pinching at him and turning sharp, warm, thick, coalescing him in the matter, and Joe's legs began to wear out. He'd be tuckered thin and driven around silly by these varmits, wouldn't he? Felt like it. Or something hairy like that.

His heart began to slow, and his brain shut down. Hallway after hallway slumbered by at a gentle, slurred pace. They were gonna stop moving, and they'd keep him caught up just like this, wouldn't they? Yeah, they were. He could hear that woman's voice somewhere, and Yoshiki's snoring that was unexpectedly loud, and somewhere far below him, the ending squeals of Pippy's life, already wrung out, echoed creepily. Everything slowed with him.

Joe's eyes twitched, and they began to roll closed with black stitching around them for what felt like the last time they'd ever close again, and a thick warmth seeped into him.

He could see something glowing, like a face, and a hand pinched over his cheek, and a whisper in that stagnant, twitching, none other than possessed tone:

 _pp-pp-p-pp—pp-p-p-ppp-please h-hh—help usssss_

 **Me: ewe Was that the end of the chapter?  
Yes.  
It was.**

 **End of... the arc? Hehehhhh, you'll have to wait and see~**

 **Joe: You're just gonna leave it off there.**

 **Me: Currently.**

 **Joe: What... what durn right happened to me? .w.**

 **Me: A lot of stuff.**

 **Joe: …**

 **Me: What? You'll have to read on to find out. x3**


	8. III: She was Saturated

**Me: Eyo, and welcome to another chapter of CPBBBB! (Nope, don't feel like typing out the full name.)**

 **Yuka: Yuka has to pee...**

 **Torn: -I don't giVE A DAMN!-**

 **Dino: I would be so much better in his role.**

 **Me: None of us care, Dino.**

 **Dino: Well, I care.**

 **Joe: I just wanna know what happened to meeee...**

 **Yuka: uuwah! So many strangers..! -waddles off-**

 **Me: Guys, you're scaring her away.**

 **Torn: -Good. I like being scary.-**

 **Dino: When do I replace him, Starry?**

Corpse Party: Broken Bones: Bloody Bonds III

Chapter Eight: She was Saturated

"Oh, so... well, it's kinda sorta a super long story. So sit tight—no. No wait. It's not thaaat long. But it's kinda long. So, you know. You can live with that, right? Of course you can. You haven't said a wink of a word against me ever since I came and started talking to you. Dang, it's a relief to find someone else around here. This place gives me some turd creeps. Pfft, if that made sense. Aw, ew, I disgusted myself."

A boy, using a great sense of demonstrative movement, his arms flapping around and slicing through gelid air in representation of either his emotions of simple showing of his words, paced a little, tripped a little, mostly stayed in that one fork of position. Gray spikes stuck up from his head and showered about him, matching his gray eyes, olive skin, and thick, oversized, gray shirt-and-shorts as well. He donned no shoes; splinters and blood coated his feet instead. He'd been doing a great deal of walking. In fact, his entire body donned sticks of splinters, and cuts, and bites in him from the school itself, just sitting there. He did a little too much moving for his own good.

"It all started like this, basically. So... y'know. Woke up in this dump.

It was like he was talking to himself.

"I dunno. I'd been with my vivosaurs, then I wasn't. So that made me sad until I woke up and realized Jkonna was shaking me awake and she was laughing like a maniac, then I was, then I was like 'tag you're it' and ran off into the halls. And what did she do? Uh, who do you think this is? It's Jkonna, duh. She chased me like heck and dang, does she have a tag. My arm still throbs, man.

Only he wasn't. A figure sat, slumped, looking dead but feeling warm with moving chest and eyes to account for some sort of life in it.

"So then... we were playing tag. And it was great, only she kept getting me—but—but then I really got her and I sprinted off and... I didn't see her. Weird, right? She's Jkonna, darn it! She's supposed to follow me and bite my arm or something! I can't somersault and cartwheel around in the halls without Jkonna! Ugh, stupids.

The figure restrained from moving whatsoever. It could have been listening, but it may not have been. It looked restrained in place: unconscious, perhaps, or held dormant by a strong influence.

"But I'd came in here with two of my best buddies ever, Droplet and Pippy. And I didn't even, like, see them. So disappointing, am I right? So I was just kinda lost until I ran into this kid who wasn't taller than me but tried to be, and he had brown hair but he left and I wanted to follow him but I didn't notice until like five years later. Yep. Typical of me. Whatever, okay. Whatever, man. So... then I was alone again and I was just being a good boy in here— _yes, that does involve somersaults and cartwheels, shut up!_ So then I found you. End of story... kinda.

That figure just stood silently and stared. The boy took this as an emphasis that he should continue his story, obviously. Smirking at himself, that was exactly what he did.

"Anyway... I guess I'm kinda lost now. I miss Jkonna a freaking ton, as she's my best friend for a reason, and, I love her and, y'know vivosaurs, they have that Bond with me, all that good vivosaur stuff, but they're missing too. Ugh, I hope Droppie and the Pipster are together, in the least. They kinda rely on each other, heh. They're all close and junk. Of course. I mean, they're Droppie and the Pipster, what else are they gonna do? Oh... ugh... what else am I gonna do?"

"..." As expected, the figure said no such thing. It was rendered unable to anyways.

"Wow, you think? Really?"

Anyone could predict how the boy heard this voice in his head, but all would agree he hadn't a word from the soul in front of him. Perhaps the school itself was twisting in his head, lying to him, convincing him of some ploy he didn't seem to shrug off all that much, as as big, swanky grin hung over his face and sharp points pulled past his lip. He was either cheery or sarcastic: a mix of both, maybe.

"Okay, yeah, I'll go do that right now—buuuuut... you're gonna be all alone while I'm gone, won't you? Ugh, right. Uhhhh... I'll come back in an hour or something, okay? Then we can be buddies and stuff again and I'll tell you what happened and we'll try to get stuff done. Maybe I'll find Jkonna, even. Oh, geez, that'd be a relief. I know it doesn't look like it, and I certainly don't sweat it, but I'm guessing... just... guessing... it's a really bad thing that Jkonna went missing. She honestly could be like in danger and junk. And... calling out to me or something. Ugh. If only I heard her... I'm gonna go call for her as I do that little patrol thingy. Thanks again and I'll try to get back here soon maybe. Okay bye." He took off for the halls in a gray blur.

The figure, saying not a word, somewhat slumped over in place but most definitely alive, felt a crack in its dark, swollen face, that sprouted into a little grin. Perhaps they'd meet again. The figure felt that they would. They would meet in multiple, doubled-over points and times, and it would be good. Something hazy overhung its eyes, but they shined some at the thought of it. Meeting again. A voiceless chortle. Yes, please.

Down spirals of pathways of wood and packed concrete alike, a single form streamed down a covered walkway, the ceiling held together only by thin poles sticking out in a coordinated landing above a creaky, wooden floor, and above were patterned tiles of shingles that were chewed in and punched through by rats and, judging by the meager set of corpses on top, people. Hungry people. The streaming little silhouette, cloaked in an amount of navy blue, ducked through the thick, metallic door on the other side of its run and burst into a row of wood and classrooms, brimming with stacks of creaky, blue-tinted floorboards. Dark and goading, a darker sort of scheme. A small pair or so of other spaces in similar coloring coincided with it, and as the little female ran, she could recognize a movement, and squealed.

"BIG BROTHER YOSHIKI!" The figure she called out to in her high-pitched, tear-drenched tone, did not hear her, and continued a slow stride. He had something shiny in his hand... but... but that didn't matter, cuz he didn't hear her so she abruptly fell and sniffled over herself, arms clasped together and shaking horridly, trickling with snot and cold and... something else.

A wince. "They're... so wet..." A sniffle spouted off into a sneeze. "Nnnnn... they're s-so... wet..." She sounded as if she wanted to scream, but couldn't bear the thought of someone else hearing her. Shaking brown locks, gently mixed in with a natural purple hue, something clattered against the ground, and a pale little hand shot out to place the plastic, pink headband upon her head again. A sigh. "Unn... I don't s-see anyone around here..." Another sniffle. "That m-makes... Yuka... s-sad..." Her head bowed, drenched little Mochida Yuka felt like a pathetic mess. She wished one of her brothers or sisters were with her. They all were big brothers and big sisters to her and she missed them and that made Yuka sad.

Coldly, quietly, slipping her yellow slippers over the cracked ground, sticking out her pale hands for balance like they'd showed her in class, Yuka swallowed her tears and shook a freezing, drenched face. "Yuka is... s-so... cold..." But she... she had to stay strong. She had to! If she wasn't strong, she wouldn't be able to find anyone again! And she didn't wanna be all alone without her big, warm family. Sniffling, sucking up snot and tears alike, Yuka's arms fell like wings to her side and it made her wish she had a guardian angel with her to watch her by. All the other cute little girls in stories got them...

But this—r-right. This was reality, and she had to be strong. What about—what about big brother? Wh-what about Satoshi? He must be really lonely without her... She knew she was. Shuddering in place, her little hands clumped into some folds in her dark blue smock, and then Yuka moved in shivered steps. Cold, upset, startled, lonely. She'd seen some sort of ghastly thingy that looked like big brother Yoshiki, but he didn't even respond when she called out for him. He wouldn't do that, would he? He... wouldn't do that to Yuka...

In her clumped, stuffy walk, Yuka stumbled down the hallway with a knotted stomach and tears in her eyes. She glanced down and caught sight of the pink bow sitting upon her attire; that paper scrap pinned in beneath it. Glimpsing that in her gentle, icy-blue eyes, made her feel a little better. Maybe it wasn't big brother Yoshiki, but someone big and scary like Mr. Kizami... So maybe it was a good thing that they hadn't heard her. The whole apparition made it look like big brother Yoshiki in his dark clothes and funny, blonde hair was a ghost, or maybe a memory, and even if she reached out and touched him, she wouldn't touch him, and maybe her hand might go through. Stumbling onward a little bit bolstered, the girl honestly didn't know how to feel. She felt cold and sad and scared out of her mind, and it was wet... too wet. It probably would get more wet as of yet, too. Yuka's stomach squirmed in place, and she cried out, biting her lip and ducking to the left into a gouge of a clearing, full of knocked-over pairs: an innumerable amount of slippers. Most had spilled out, and she gently compared her yellow slipper to a pink one nearby, its size... only somewhat tinier than hers. Must be a first- or second-grader. She's pretty tiny, so...

Sniffling, the lost girl mumbled, "Why are there so many tiny shoes here?" She kind of knew: the school, having once been home for elementary students, probably... had some shoes left over when it became part of this whole nexus thingy. Big brother would know. She wished she could ask him...

W-well, Yuka! If Yuka wants to ask him, she'd better keep staying alive and looking for him and her other big brothers and big sisters! She wasn't gonna let any of them go. And again, her heart coughed up that thought of big brother Yoshiki... oh, it probably... was... there probably was something wrong with it, though...

Something blue reached at Yuka's head firmly and something hot and... sc-scaled... yanked her back. _Holy fuck, are you_ trying _to kill yourself? Dammit, that was a close call! Shit! Get back here, kid!_ Glancing forward, she caught eye of a... a creature, a—a ghost! It was a pale cyan ghost reaching right at her with its claw-like hands drawn out and, and, and... her head reeled. How did she not notice that—that ghost? It was literally right there, trying to chomp off her face. Squealing and reeling in a late-blooming burst of fear, her hands fell to her head and she began to sob in them, her stomach convulsing angrily like a sea monster was in there. _G-graaah! Kid! K-kid! Calm down! Dammit, you're just like Di—HEY! CALM THE FUCK DOWN, RIGHT NOW! I'LL PROTECT YOU, DAMMIT! SHIT! I'M RIGHT HERE FOR YOU, I PROMISE!_ That hot thing yanked her back and they fell first into the streets of all those tiny, cluttered rainbows of shoes, then the thing sprinted on all... all four limbs... past and threw them into these nearby double-doors, where secure rows of shoe lockers stood calmly in their stiff, wooden scent, and there were no shoes here, and the creature slammed against the doors behind.

He was a lot bigger than she thought. He also wasn't human—she'd decided he was a male. He looked like a male. He had big, yellow eyes that must've been larger than her face, and feet-long a body of hot-red scales with... with limbs, four limbs, like a doggy or kitty, only like a doggy that was gigantic and a reptile. And his scaled, red face had a small sail over that, and his body swooned with a huge one, carrying off and mending with his tail. "A-ah... eeee _eeeekkk! Who are you?_ " she wailed, "who a _re youuuuu?_ " Where was big brother? Where was he? Who was this scary thing?

 _Aw, shit. I scared you. I'm very sorry..._ He even had a sadistic look on him. Yuka tried to swallow down her pity—monsters didn't deserve pity—but she couldn't. Her mind began screeching about how scary and monster-like he was. _Damn, you have no idea what a telepathic communication is, do you? Stop calling me a fucking monster! It's not nice! I'm not a fucking monster, I fucking swear! Dammit... I'm probably scaring you—shit what do I do... uuughhhh, if Trikko was here... oh... but we got in that argument—DAMMIT. I'M SORRY EVERYONE!_

That sail on his back rippled like a big, scary storm over the water and a forked tongue flickered out. Yuka's face was riddled with beads of sweat and panting gasp and a thick, unruly blush. It felt strange and scary to be conflicted with this red creature. _U-ummm..._ She decided to try and channel her thoughts into something more appropriate than monsters. _Who... are you... e-er! What are you, exactly..?_

 _Daaaammnnn... you sound so sweet and adorable like Dina... I'm sure she'd love you. Haha..._ The creature, still stuck against the double-doors to try and stop the ghost monster, maybe? So he wasn't as scary as that little boy... _I'm Torn. Torn the dimetro. Nice ta meetcha. I curse all the fucking time, as you can tell, and I'm generally bad company, but I like sweet and soft people. They're my buddies, and I like to call myself their guardian asshole. Or not. You get it. Because I'm cool like that. Trikko—now, Trikko... would disagree but..._ His big, yellow orbs suddenly looked darker, sadder. He couldn't be a monster if he could get that sad... It hurt Yuka's heart, and she shrugged at a sob that only grew bigger and bigger inside of her, like it wanted to take her over.

Sudden shafts of concern, like floorboards in his eyes, careened in Torn's big, yellow eyes. Oddly, they began to look a little comforting and gentle and... kind. The little eighth grader suddenly felt a lot more safer to be locked in the room with the big, comforting dragon thingy. _Er... hey, kid? You okay now? You feeling any better? Shit..._ He left off for a moment, and a long, thin tongue poked out, like he was tasting the air; then it popped back with his rows of tiny but sharp teeth. If Yuka ever disobeyed someone, she didn't want it to be this fiery-looking guy. He appeared nice, but he also appeared scary, like he could really hurt someone, if he wanted to. _I feel like something bad is hanging over the air... and it's for more reasons than.. what happened with Trikko and me..._

She quietly realized he still didn't know her name. Awkwardly placing a small, thin, pale hand on her chest, the girl spluttered and tried that mental talking again. _Mochida Yuka; this is... M-Mochida... nnn... Yuka. This is Yuka..._ When he repeated her name—not her last name, her first name—back, a warmth flushed in her face and she liked that more than a cold, simple last name. Yuka... it felt nice in that adventurous maw. She didn't know what the boy did in his life, and how he even existed, or was here, or anything, in the first place, but he was here now, and that made her feel a little special, a little cherished, a little... better. Sniffling over her snot and tears, Yuka aimed a tiny smile back. It... wasn't that bad.

 _Huh... I can't tell which of us has been stuck in this reign of shit longer. We both look relatively fucked. What's your story, Yuka?_ When... when big, tall Mr. Kizami had used that name, it was so drawn-out and in hot, thick breath. The way Mister Torn said it sounded alright, and a little jumpy and light on its feet, like her name had become a kitty.

Having nothing else to do about it, she plopped down on hard, icky floorboards and began to talk. Her eyes strayed around and her little voice didn't hold itself up very well, but somehow it felt like she and the dimetro guy were having a close and intimate conversation. This... telepathic talking was a little nice. If only she could do that with big brother, then she could always be with him!

 _It's k-kinda a long story, but it goes something like this... So... there was the school, and then my..._ She supposed it'd be weird to call them all her big brothers and big sisters. Torn might get confused... Angrily shaking her head, she mumbled apologetically to them and instead used for the sake of Torn, _my friends and I, we all did this charm and we ended up here in the school... and I was with big brother when suddenly he was gone and Naomi was—no, wait..._ That... happened some other time. Not this time. Focusing her mind on the now, she started again and stumbled. _I was with Ayumi—a-and Mayu! And we... no..._ She sighed softly. _Oh... I can't really remember..._

Torn blinked softly. _Damn, kid. Take a rest. I'll just try to explain mine, then, and you get some breathers, you poor girl. Damn... damn damn..._ Was that some sort of titter of his? Torn was kinda funny, and she giggled at that. _Holy hell—yes! You're laughing! I did something right! So... aaanyways..._ The big reptilian creature, red and shiny with scales, grew as lax as he could against the bumbling, bumping double-doors he blocked off. Yuka didn't want to know how much he might weigh, she decided, as his sail sagged and his body grew overall supple, or as tender as it'd get in that position. _So. I was with my best friend. Y'know... no big deal..._ Already those sun-like orbs were distant and regretful, like he must've done something wrong.

 _And... we stumbled up out of our heap of vivosaur limbs and looked around. We hadn't woken up or gone unconscious. I mean, yeah, the jump was fucking huge, but we're stronger than that. Just winded us some. So we were just... wandering around some, trying to figure out what the hell happened, when we found a door. Now, Trikko, being the smartass he is, was all over how we'd have to shrink to get in, so, y'know, we did. This is my usual height of fortysomeshitty feet long. We had to get, like, pocket-size, to go through most doors so it'd be easier. Double-doors, not so much. Anyway, that was all fine and dandy. We found a shiny contraption and I pulled it and he yelled at me for being rash and it was all good. Then I fucking cussed him out and he was all like 'I'm a tricera,' cuz he is, y'know, he's not a bastardized bitch..._

 _And he's not. It was... it was... d-dammit, it was funny. We were being ourselves and joking lightly in our shitty jokey way and it wasn't all that bad. Eventually we fucked the idea of going through all those doors and just stayed big, running around... sort of having fun, just... happy that even in this hell, we had a buddy... and there was no other buddy we'd rather have. But then we found... we found one of those fucking dead bodies, and we realized that we had friends in here, and... if they died... Ugh._ A furious shake of the head no. _They couldn't die! Dammit, they couldn't die!_

 _I grew faster looking around, but... Trikko wasn't all that fast. So I'd wait for him, only this one time the floor went out and I was stuck ahead of him and it took grueling amounts of time to get us back. And when I found that room under the bathrooms and used that red door and went back upstairs, tried to surprise him with a smile... He was so mad at me. He was fucking pissed at me. I'd... never felt worse. Just that look was like he'd handed my ass back to me after whipping it. His stare... his look... he'd just went worse and worse and that look... Oh... Trikko... what did I do to start that fight..? Hell... I don't care... how much we yelled and how... serious it got... I want..._

Torn, the girl soon learned, was stronger than that. _Hey yo Yuka, it's in my code to help sweet little girls. I gotta help them. But... uh... can you help me find Trikko? There's... no way I can lose the dude. I must've caused that fight somehow... and I made him angry—and dammit, I wanna take it back._ Honestly, from the way the fire-breathing boy said it, he looked like he didn't even realize that... there was no way that could've all been his fault. Trikko got mad at him and it must've went from there. It all sounded serious, scary. Something little Yuka didn't get involved in, when all the big brothers and sisters might fight... That scared her. Big sisters Seiko and Mayu weren't like that, but some of them were, and Yuka got that they couldn't always be kind and gentle, but that didn't mean she had to like it.

 _Yuka, will you help me find him?_ He paused, and then, _Will you help me find my friends?_

Someone had once said something like that to her before. All kind, gentle. Wanted her to help him find his little sister; but he'd had no little sister. He faked his concern really, really well, too. But he didn't say her name like it was no big deal, just a peppy _Yuka_ , he said it like _Yuuuukaaaaaaaa,_ and that was different. Also, he didn't say that he and his little sister—this Trikko in this case—had something before this. Trikko sounded like a very real character, this time around. His name jumped and strutted a short, stout walk like he actually existed, and Yuka believed funky Torn.

 _O-okay!_

In that moment it was decided that the little girl in her oversized blue smock would trust the strange, fortysomethinglong creature with scales and big teeth. His red coat shimmered, and those yellow orbs looked a little bit less sad. The prospect of going back into that mansion with the ghosts and the corpses and this missing Trikko sounded less daunting when teamed up with someone else. Though she had a hard time reading some of the more advanced words on the papers strapped to the wall, she's gotten the main idea that some of those victims didn't like the whole idea of being around someone else: but Torn felt like safety, and so did the air around him. Once he gently unstrapped the crook of the two, brown double-doors, they yawned open like nothing else and in spilled a cyan light.

Torn's new friend's face drastically paled. Swallowing, nothing came up and Yuka clamped her teeth tight together and shivered on her own. The dimetro following by her seemed to smile a little at this. This was where he came in. Dina, as he'd been prattling on about, she was so much like this. So scared and shaky and she needed Torn to help her through this, and he needed her sweet, affable self. That girl with the chunky strips of brown lightly-violet hair and the plastic headband that tried to tone it down reminded Torn of that, and how much he enjoyed the feeling of watching over those poor characters. Without further ado, with that ghost thing stumbling, mumbling, and moaning all for her in this painfully slow gait, Torn swept his big, red tail out from under her tiny feet—and her shoes clattered off, oh hell, oops—and the duo was off, out of the dead end of a chamber.

Three little words. Those were all he had to remember. Three little words. They had been the ones stolen from his outstretched claw, one he had... he must've done himself, and swallowing his shame, he had to find. Trikko... his best friend. Dina... his Bond, his gal, his buddy, the human he'd been watching for more than ten years now. Oh, right, and he guessed Rupert, too. Rupert was... well... he _kinda_ mattered, technically sort of kind of being Dina's... well... _boyfriend_ , as hard as it was to believe, by now. Torn still, as hard as he tried, couldn't get it. Couldn't comprehend it: _why_ had she gone for that kid? Why did she have to fall into that awkward, vulnerable position of romance? Stupid life. Smirking beside himself, Torn shook out his fanned, red head and led the girl onward. He had absolutely no idea where his best friend might be, but after leaving him because Trikko said so... those teeth of his gritted and locked into place. He couldn't... couldn't back down now. Damn straight.

Their odd little duo of dimetro and shuffling girl embarked on their quest outside of the school's entrance. Neither had thought of disturbing that front door with their friends in mind, specifically the drawl on Torn's dear friend Trikko who could be nearby, even close as a heartbeat away, a floor above, a hallway past: Yuka grew excited upon the idea of possibilities. Torn couldn't help but snag a bit of a grin like it was a cookie at that sight of tiny Yuka calmly stepping after him, with her faith on what may lie ahead on the dimetro just in front of her. She reminded him so much of Dina, it honestly hurt a little. But with that attitude, she may have already died, and this notorious fire-breather, as Trikko would call him from time to time, didn't have time for that shit. He was gonna live, and he was gonna find those friends of his and if Yuka remembered the ordeal with her buddies they'd find them too, and they'd get this over with.

Torn's tail angrily swung side to side like an abundance of exclamation marks; his agitation mixed with determination was an obvious explosive loaded up. Somewhat worried by the thought of other ghosts following them around the creepy hallways, Yuka hung like a shadow over the red-scaled creature, her eyes always flickering over his fanned self, feeling more assured that, as she saw it, she had a huge guard dog by her side. Torn, being from another world altogether, had no idea what this dog her mind roiled of was, but he assumed that wasn't really a bad thing, that dogs were probably helpful. At least, Yuka didn't look so scared of him by now.

 _Yuka? Why do you walk so slowly?_

She was a bit squeamish in step, her legs crossed together and her stomach a seed of terror whose stem grew into her veins and took over. Shaking herself, somewhat composed, she formed a silent answer, which proved to be much easier than a vocal one. _Yuka... has to pee..._ Sh-she still did, even after... Ah! It was Kizami! She'd woken up with some friends who were looking for Kizami—friends of Kizami—and they found him, but when she found a bathroom, the door was kicked in and... when she opened it, they were... n-no more...

That way Mr. Kizami had treated the girl... and judging by all those other memories: it had to... be him... who had killed them... n-no? That girl... with the orange hair and the tiny grin, and all of those wounds that didn't even harm her at all, those sad, brown eyes and the pale skin... a red coat somehow protected by all the cuts and stuff mucked up on her... She looked so sad... and... she had Yuka run—she'd saved Yuka, didn't she? If only Yuka could manage to remember... her name... Oh, who was her savior? What was her name? Was she even alive now? Mr. Kizami looked like he... meant something... and he looked ready to kill with that kn-knife... Shuddering, the feeling caught up in her heart didn't pass and Yuka squirmed again in place as Torn slowly led the way, all the careful. He didn't look quite like a careful soul, but he had a good sense of danger. Perhaps he fell into it too often. He and Trikko... The girl ducked her head with a smile at the thought. Whatever this... tricera... was... He and the dimetro must be really cute together, she obliged.

 _Mister Torn..?_

 _Please don't call me that. Fuck... Torn's fine and dandy as it is. I don't think someone as shitty as me should use the title 'Mister' anyway, so... fuck. I should just answer the damn question. What's up, Yuka?_

 _Are you and Trikko... really close?_

That quieted him for a time. Yuka felt like she'd just blown out a warm, friendly candle, and as his casual sidelong glances and words went to a halt, eventually stalling him as they were about to turn left and take a line of stairs, and holding their whole momentum to a halt. He gave a beaten sigh, like he was losing a battle. _Well... Yes. We are. We were kinda like black and white for some time. Well, red and blue. That stout bastard... He has a fan, too, but it's around his face and it's pale and blue, not a bunch of muddled reds and burgundies. At first, we always had these tiny, petty arguments, but as we grew closer, it kinda became a facade, and they were all fun and games... But I suppose those fun and games were bound to end at some point in a shitty excuse of a home like this._

Childish and confused, Yuka tacked on, _It's a school, not a house._

 _...The fuck is a school?_

 _It's where kids learn things. I guess you wouldn't know... since you don't look like someone... Yuka would see when she... goes to school... Everyone is a human, not..._

 _Vivosaur._ That word... it felt rough, weird, new to use in her head, but she had nothing better to do, so she led on with Torn's advice: _Nobody is a vivosaur at Yuka's school. All... humans. There's never been anyone but humans here, in these spaces, you know. You and Trikko must be the first of the-these vivosaurs to show up here. It's really, really weird..._ She droned off and stared up at a random floorboard overhanging above the staircase. Torn's eventual feet plowed ahead in a red blaze of scales. Relief coolly blew on her, and Yuka straddled up with him.

All he had to say to that was _Weird. Well, different. All of that shit. You know._ And... again, silent. He must've been brooding over a whole lot of things then. Yuka couldn't catch a glint of those big, yellow eyes she found comfort in, but her small, lithe figure, jumping back at every slight noise as they rounded those creaky stairs in their navy blue hue, felt some warmth crawl back into her hands after she'd blown him out. She wondered what sort of happy thoughts might be roaming around in his head. Maybe he was thinking about Trikko, or... those other friends of his. _Dina'd probably fit in at a school. Rupert, too. Not this school. You don't look like you'd fit in at this school, since everything looks kinda too small for you, but... maybe you'd all go to school together or something. I don't fucking know..._

 _Eheh! That would be fun!_ Squeaking and taking a step back, the dress-worn girl recalled that she didn't know this "Rupert" or this "Dina" that her friend... yes... her friend... spoke of. _W-wait. Who's Dina..?_ So he answered, and a little delightfully. It must've felt nice for him to pull back some memories and try to... preserve what he still had of them. Aw... Torn... Yuka's heart ached a little for him. He wasn't scary... he wasn't scary at all...

 _Dina's... she's a lot like you. But prolly some older. She was that small when she was your age, but she had to grow a little bit, yeah? She's almost five feet tall, I think. Almost. Anyway... orange waves of hair that look like a warm glow of fire, a pretty, pale face, and some kind, brown eyes... Ah... I miss her. She's too kind for her own good and the biggest pushover of all time. I... have to watch over her, or bitch people will walk all over her. And I don't want that. And Trikko doesn't want that... That's the first thing that united us; and sure as hell it still does. So it's weird... when I'd brought it up he got so mad at me... d-dammit... what did I do wrong..._ An angry shake of his head and Torn continued. _Oh, but Rupert! See, Rupert is her boyfriend, and damn, I don't give a fuck about him. He'd better keep being nice to her and proving himself, though... rrrrrrrrrrrrg..._ A slumbering growl spouted from inside of his maw.

 _Yeah sorry I have a fucking issue with him. I don't trust him watching over her. Whatever. I'll be around forever with Dina, and I... I'll try to protect her as much as I can, no matter what. No matter what happens, she's a priority to me... she's so weak and adorable and... ugh. Okay. Okay. Rant over, I promise. Now... you said you have to pee? Let's go try and find you a bathroom, okay?_ And, surprisingly, Yuka's legs stumbled in front of her, none the wiser, and she pushed past Torn on her shoeless feet, long socks the only protection from whatever might be on the ground. She... she didn't wanna think about it. Stumbling ahead, she pulled to the right and plowed past another row of doors and halls that Torn mockingly admired by their size proportions and ducked to a left.

Her foot slipped, and the world came black around her.

Something cold, hard, pinched her and dragged her right back up. _I'm not gonna let you die, now. Holy hell no._ A bright-white claw, attached to a long, thick, red-scaled paw, dragged the girl by the neck of her blue dress back onto stable ground again. She glanced on from her gap and gasped, falling back, at the shock of a drop. _Oh, yeah... this is... this is near where Trikko and I..._ He cringed, stopped. The fight. The breaking of the floorboards that tore them apart... has... has _torn_ them apart, now. But yet this vivosaur wanted to keep fighting; and it made Yuka want to keep fighting, too. She sucked in a breath, suddenly relieved to be alive. Staring down through that hole... she would've had a long drop into a dark abyss before the pain of hitting the ground came to her. She gulped. The thin, sharp claw came and dragged her back more.

 _There was a bathroom up there,_ she stated blatantly.

Torn grinned somewhat. _Goodie. Let's go and find it. I think I know how to get up there._ Where... he and his friend had split off, right? And Trikko... Would they find Trikko, then, if... they went this route? O-or would they get even more clueless..? All she knew was that they had to find this tricera... who had a fanned head... and he was stout and blue... but he was important to Torn. Torn didn't like giving up. He looked tired and miserable with himself, but he didn't like giving up. Yuka clenched tiny fists in her hands: to anyone else, they meant nothing but pinches in her fingers, but to her... She wanted to remember what this strange creature had told her, keep it at hand... stay by his side... recover this nearly-blemished friendship by this monster school.

This kindly figure had nothing to do with being a monster; the school did. Always the school. Always the school. Struggling in place, shaking her head feverishly, the little girl raised a small, furled fist of a hand and stroked her plastic headband lightly. First Torn, so strong and fiery; and this... Her mom had gotten her the headband. Thinking about her parents—recalling her spoiled homage—Yuka giggled to herself. She had to keep in high spirits. It didn't matter if something wanted to squish when she took a step, or how cold and wet it was, or how dreary this place had to be... Just hold your head high, Yuka, just hold it high a-anyways.

Torn would help her find big brother. He'd help her find all of her big brothers and big sisters. He just... he looked like it. He helped people like her—and like Dina, too. That... meant something... right? Or was this place just... messing with her... Forcibly shaking her head, she found that motion Torn did—the head, the flickering of his tongue—helpful. She mimicked him, and smiled beside herself. The dimetro just snorted, causing a small flame to flicker from his red-hot snout, and turned completely backward, chasing down that other staircase. As their odd little troop headed nearer, the air began to grow thick, moist, uneven, clogged in her throat. Head spinning, Yuka receded some paces and soon found herself able to breathe all over again. She choked somewhat, but otherwise felt under control enough.

How under control could you get, here? And... and where was big brother..? Was he under control?

Sensing their combined unease, Torn stumbled back and scraped his claws against wood in the narrow hallway—so tiny and precious in comparison to his larger self. _Well, we still have the other staircase. The one we took in the first place. Damn, thank you schools for having multiple staircases. Now if only they gave out layered pants..._

 _Wha-what..?_

 _Hmm? Oh, shit, sorry. That might've scared you. It's just an inside joke. There's this one bitch who kept moaning to Dina about his crap and he had layered pants. So... well, basically, me and my other friends fought his vivosaurs, and I distracted him by getting all fucking messed up about his layered pants... ahh, it was great. Well, anyways, there aren't any layered pants here, and they're incredibly unimportant, so let's just move on._ Yuka, smirking a little at the thought, gave an innocent nod and slowly waddled up to Torn. Her stomach's cramps seemed to be multiplying inside of her. They just kept getting worse... Yuka really, really needed to pee... _Yeah, let's go._

So the two, the smaller, delicate one following the bigger and redder with his warmer, yellow eyes, followed in suit down the same hallways and the winding staircase, then to the right and up that singular hall in the midst of the first floor. _Now if we take a riiiiight..._ That the dimetro did. He steered them past the long ride—Yuka's head spun from all the openings and ins and outs and corridors, and she found the reptile creature with his claws caved into the wall at the edge of the turn on the right, just sticking out, his tail shaking as he struggled.

 _T-Torn!_ she squeaked out at him.

 _Dammit, DOOR, FUCKING OPEN, RIGHT NOW!_

She then learned that even the kindest looking guard dogs of reptiles could have a scary temper. He wasn't tired at all, but gritting his teeth and smirking and angry beam at the red door on the edge of the hallway, claws making exclamation marks of _scraaaaaaa—scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaapes_ in the wood. He grunted and scowled and forced loud grunts as he worked, but the red door didn't look likely to oblige. It held itself, despite the strength the large creature held out.

 _FUCK YOU, RED DOOR. FUCK. YOU._ Thoughts sprung and ripped at Torn's head, and in the ferocity of the moment, they sent Yuka down. _Splort._ She hit something squishy that smelled. Angry thoughts the color of blood spilled out in claw-like slashes: fear for Trikko and anxiety of Yuka's need to pee both created this raging monster who wanted that door to open. She saw that at first—what if Trikko was in there? But it soon became so much more, and he worried over the slightest thought that maybe someone more important was there; maybe someone was dying, even. A-and maybe... someone was. They were sort of stuck so they couldn't tell.

By the end of it, Yuka didn't have to pee any longer. Mumbling to herself about how much colder and wet she'd become and quietly sobbing about it in the eye of the anger, Yuka collapsed on her soft cushion and waited.

It took time. Lots of gentle, patient time. Torn thought he could bust it open. He didn't look used to the thought of not being able to do something. Not being able to help someone. And he was not happy about it. Stifling suspense trickled down inside of Yuka, who waited and squirmed in place, threatened to tell the dimetro to give it up, but his undying focus pulsed him on, and at times, it almost looked like an opening would split. Then Yuka remembered it didn't matter because she didn't have to pee anymore; but what if Trikko... that blue guy—what if he—?

As the aggravated dimetro saw no escape and began to give into this quiet dawning, the little girl glanced down at what felt so warm and glimpsed red. A lot of red, peeled over a rusted body full of squishy cotton-like organs that supplied her chair. Something guttural and unannounced tore out of Yuka's throat and she splintered away from what she saw; still a weight held her down, draping coldly and wet and sticking to her and smelling of something she couldn't even try to describe, and with tears hot in her eyes, she shivered and split out of it, leaving her dress and feeling airy and open, like a flower on the bottom. Thinking fast, Yuka took down the hallway in her small form and stumbled and ran and ran and her feet made hollow _thwacking_ noises without shoes and they cut hard, even with socks that tried to protect her.

She wanted her big brother. Nowhere, though. Satoshi was nowhere, and none of her friends were anywhere, and she felt so, so alone. Wailing piteously to herself and feeling all the more pathetic, this sloshing emotion crammed down in her, the brunette slipped and fell and hit her head against something soft and she screeched and recoiled back, her head splitting against the wall and knocking out enough floorboards to deliver the tip of her cranium into pure darkness outside of the school's outer barrier.

Thin, frigid items, like fingers, reached out and touched her head, nearly snapping the plastic reminder on top. Yuka's head fell forward into her matted-red lap and she thrust her pale, thin arms over it like a birthday present in some attempt to secure herself from the darkness festooning all around her. Taking in gasping, shuddering breaths, she missed him. She missed big brother; she missed them all. Sitting there on her own felt ugly, purely ugly, and it was cold and sad and barren and where was Torn when she needed him?

 _Y-Yuka! Holy shit!_

Right there. Unlike big brother... h-he was still right there. He'd gotten angry and taken out a temper on a red door that wouldn't reveal anything for him, but he was here anyways and he was okay. A gentle, clawed hand pawed slightly at the floor somewhere, the familiar _sssskriiitching_ not a new sound to the little girl's ear. She'd heard it often as they padded around the school, and immediately felt safer now. Unlike big brother—unlike anyone—Torn was still right there, and he didn't even try to act like he didn't do anything wrong, but he didn't mention it, either. There was a small plug of regret, but most of it released and tears welled up in Yuka's eyes. In her eyes, even with it _he_ using up most of that regret. She felt a little bottle of it spilled over, though, too.

He sighed softly. _Awwwwwww. Damn, I love people with your personality. You're so fucking adorable. Tell me when you're ready._ And with a simple sweep of his fiery tail, he awaited as ice-blue eyes with a much more gentle texture split and welled with their tears, sending them free down her face in strokes of waves. He waited and watched calmly, offering no word, as the tears ran down her cheeks and distilled her entire composure, and she felt safe knowing that someone like Torn was the one watching over her as she cried this pathetically. D-did big brother see her... o-ooh... th-that'd be... so... _embarrassing!_ Sniffling, using a swatch off of her dress as a tissue, Yuka slowly worked her way through the emotions coursing in her, and she and Torn shakily stood, him from sore tiredness and her from drained, sad emotions, and they found that other staircase to their backs, just... right there.

Yuka, having wandered and stumbled around blindly, found this quite interesting but didn't mind too much, as she could have very likely came down this bend. It was weird, though, that now on the first floor, that permeating sense of darkness had all but left their minds blank. It was like... something might've been directing them that way—when Torn's eyes split.

 _I think I hear Trikko's voice down the hallway, Yuka,_ he whispered. The girl, absorbed in sight of this staircase, right here, not the nearby, adjacent one down the wending corridor, paused momentarily, but shook her head. _Yuka, I... dammit, I hear someone important to me down that hallway..._

She had an uneasy feeling.

The question was which way it originated from: this calm staircase, or Torn's hearing things down from the other one? B-but... But _Yuka_ didn't hear anyone calling. Why did that mean anything? Tempted by Torn's alluring, hot mutter, she turned and saw something blue hurtling toward them.

No, not blue—a blinding blur of that white-blue, that cyan, that...

The dimetro stared, transfixed at it. Those unsettling emotions caught sight of Yuka's too-gentle unprotected heart and pulled, but that thing... it looked like the little boy from prior, only bigger and it had a big, sad stain on its face. Bad. Bad bad bad, screamed her head, bad, Yuka, bad. Not knowing what to do, she tore up the staircase. Torn didn't follow. Torn—he didn't—

 _TORN, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHY ARE YOU LETTING THIS LITTLE GIRL CRAWL UP INTO MY SPACE?_

Then he came. He burst in running, gasping, panting, head swiveling madly. That deep, stout tone... who was it..?

 _TRIKKO! HOLY FUCK! TRIKKOOOOOOOOO!_ It was nothing like Yuka had ever seen before. That big guard dog of a soul split and ducked himself into the ground and laughed softly as tears began to coil down his hot-red cheeks. Small, happy tears. He couldn't even find Trikko, but to hear that stout, incredibly deep voice was enough for him. Yuka giggled softly in the revelation of the moment. But... where... was... Tri—

A shuffling of wood. Something fell from overhead and knocked her plastic, pink headband over. In a fit of instinct, Torn's clawed front paw snapped and scooted the bit of shining pink toward her and his head cracked above. And there, inhumanely secure by the old, creaking floorboards just above, sown in place, wriggling in exclamation marks of agony and failure, was a stout, blue quadrupedal similar to the fortysomethinglong that Torn was in length, all fortysomethinglong feet of his blue body, tinged with pale on his stomach and bottom of feet, wedged up in there.

Three horns dominated on his face: one his nose, two where his ears would've been if he didn't have slits like Torn. He did have a fan around his stout, blue face, with the patterned colors of blue and pale. All of him, just like his friend, was scaled. But he wasn't like a dog; he was like an oversized reptile cat. A fat cat who listened to nobody and had its own ideals. _Torn, your help would be greatly appreciated right now,_ he calmly snorted. Yuka shyly waved up at him, her face paling and flushing at the same, flustered timing.

 _Yeah, I'm working on that, smarta—Trikko, a-are you..._ He suddenly paused in mid-reach upwards for the... that was a tricera. _A-are you... m-mad at me... still..? I'm fucking sorry... for whatever I did—I fucking swear! I'm really damn sorry, Trikko! I'M SORRY, DAMMIT! JUST FORGIVE ME ALREADY FOR WHATEVER THE HELL I DI—_

 _Whoa._ He sounded somewhat calmer on his feet. _Whoaaa, Torn... what..._ He blinked dizzily. _What are you... talking about? I don't really... remember what happened, but... a fight..? There was a fight and..? What? Ugh, gimme a second... I just remember looking up and... it felt like something was wrong with me, but I remember you weren't by my side suddenly, and that was pretty messed up. That was very messed up. Ulgh. I didn't like that at all. Anyway, then I blacked out again, and I woke up stuck in this diabolical trap._ He... was a little different than Torn. Very different. So far, they didn't seem to have much in common. But... the way they acted toward each other felt so warm and sparkly...

She wasn't sure how she'd feel if she'd had a big, ugly fight with big brother and he couldn't even remember it later, but Torn's response wasn't even strained. _I dunno what the hell happened, but damn, I'm so happy to see you again! There was like this fight, and you got pissed at me for a bunch of reasons and I felt just as fucked as Dina did! No joke, man, no joke! I felt like I was some unworthy bitch!_

 _Torn, do you feel alright? Wow, there must have been some nasty trick cutting you for you to act like that. I'm surprised and also a little delighted. Finally you have a less inflated ego._ That deep tone... Yuka couldn't help it. It made her giggle, sending two pairs of eyes down on her.

 _Trikko, she just laughed at you._

 _Shut up, Torn._

 _That's fucking hilarious._

 _Do you think I care right now, Torn?_

 _Yes, of course you care! Again, THAT'S FUCKING HILARIOUS, TRIKKO, M'DEAR BASTARD!_

 _Well don't I feel well-cared for._

 _Uh, why don't you just hop out of the fucking trap._

 _It doesn't work like that._ Yuka didn't know what he meant at first, the deep-voiced tricera with a strange amount of tacky smarts, like if he was at her school she'd want to ask him to do her homework for her, but as she glimpsed around the topic, she caught these bits of wood and nail fighting to dig a grip into his skin. And they looked... deep. He had holes punctured in him. Infected holes, probably, judging by the swelling, like pink tissue fogging up those little slits. And... he probably couldn't shrink into that smaller form of his, all stuck like that.

Staring down through slits that felt ominously like jail bars, squirming and feeling hot embarrassment shoving down his throat, the blue-scaled quadrupedal stared down at his best friend and the little girl he'd garnered who didn't look anything like Dina besides being tiny and wearing blue. It was somewhat hilarious, but mostly just an outright embarrassment to see this. What was Torn thinking? Well, Trikko supposed, did he stumble upon a little girl, he'd particularly feel toward opting to help her out, not leave her to weep. But then again, he was Trikko. He might. He didn't know. All he did know was that he was _stuck_ and his best friend, a fiery dimetro with a sail stuck to his flaming hot back, continued to poke fun at him. Annoying, but predictable.

 _Anyone offer to help me?_ he eventually called below. That little girl was waving at him, but Trikko wasn't really in the position to wave back, now was he? No, not really. Ugh, this annoying, stuck adversary to help shove him in this tiny atrocity of his cell was pure irritation. His back itched. His tail itched. The fan around his face itched. His stubby, blue paws itched. Everything itched and some of the holes in his body had to be inflamed. How disgusting. Screwing up a rank face, he squiggled around some more in his cage with some vain hope it'd fall through.

It didn't. He snorted at himself with a _harrumph._

Silly Torn with his horridly blemished education suggested, _Uhhhhh, try at the boards until one of them snaps loose? That'd probably do something. They look pretty weak. I don't fucking know, man, you tell me. Dammit, I know you're the smart one._

He couldn't digress to that. It was very true. Trikko smirked to a distinguished level at his compliment and nodded to it with a light air to show his thankfulness. _You look so fucking ridiculous._

 _Thank you. At least I don't show it on a regular basis._

 _Love you too,_ the fiery soul spluttered back.

Trikko flinched a little in sight of what he'd said and muttered _Th-that's not necessarily a bad thing._

 _HA!_ That got his blood curdling. Torn knew that. Nefarious fire-breather. _I knew I'd net a compliment out of you if I did that! YEAH!_ He started parading, just like that, all so happy and bouncy with his findings. Trikko just snorted again and shook his head gruffly. The little girl his friend had gone and found like some stray quietly piped in.

 _Mister Trikko?_ She was a tiny thing, with a whiny voice. Not bad, not bad at all. He grinned beside himself. _D-do you think... if you pull on one of the pieces of wood, maybe it'll snap back and... it'll l-let you through..?_

 _Hm. Not bad. I will experiment with your theory and analyze my results._

 _Damn Trikko. You're confusing the kid with your weird talk._

 _N-no he isn't, Torrnnn!_

 _Aw, okay. That makes me sad._

Snorting at his incompetent friend, though he was admittedly not... not too bad, Trikko did just that: he looked over what he had among him, now that the relief of finding his best friend alive and kicking and not hopelessly trapped had become natural and calming, he found that there was a set of three different lines of wood that looked promising. But... he had three different choices to plug from. One sat slightly above his head in the mesh and wire of old oak, so he could probably pop up that way, and the other two were further away from him: one, crooked, to the far left, another a small climb below where he could mash through and fall his way down.

The latter two obviously looked more dangerous and less likely to be taken. The top appeared to be more satisfactory in choice. If he had to choose from a dangerous struggle to the left where he'd spill down at the bottom of the stairs, crawling and mashing down, or coming up and around, well, hello, what was he going to choose?

His trio-horned face pierced upward in a curl of a snarl.

 _CRUNCH!_

In an unfortunate trip on straight-out brown, wooden flooring below not so punctured with holes and quite tidy, a boy tripped over a sudden lapse in judgment as the ground let up and he fell to his knees, a silvery cell phone clattering out of his grip and sent far along the ground. It'd popped open due to the impact onto his photos album, and it was then that the boy's breath hitched. Pictures. All of those photographs he'd taken. The girl beside him, seeing his spill, pulled her arm gently into his black-clad one and helped him upward, herself running over to retrieve what he'd dropped. "M-Mayu," he called softly, though she didn't listen, insisting it was no problem. The boy's glasses flashed slightly where they perched on his face, and a trill of fear crawled into him. "Mayu," he whispered, softer. Now afraid.

The shorter and absolutely adorable girl, her chocolatey-brown bangs sidled by hair pins to the edges of her face, that bubbly, pink hair pin clipping one side of her head up, pointed toward him and beamed. Her green orbs shined. "I got it, Shige-nii!" she chirped lightly, "it's fine!" She had such a sweet, playful tone.

Worry.

Shige-nii already could tell what it was opened up, to which assortment of pictures she would find. His breath grew slack, heart icy cold, fear pumping through to him. He didn't show it very well, but he could feel it inside of him. That damn school. Those damn photos. He just used them to try to keep his sanity in check, without realizing they'd cracked him from the start. They didn't help; they didn't help at all; they were cursed; they were going to take Mayu away from him, weren't they?

It would be over...  
She'd leave him for this...

It was an accident, truly. The bodies... he'd seen one back in that messed up, black-floored nexus of a person... a female body... and something inside of him was drawn to it and he'd pulled out his cell phone and captured it forever in the memory card. He didn't know what it had been that had drawn him to do it... and it festered in him: what had he done? Surely, she would... she... He couldn't stand the thought of losing her, but she was going to see all of those corpses logged into his camera and...

"No..." It puled right out of him. "No..." He was sure she couldn't hear him; just desperate instinct driving in him. He couldn't lose Mayu... but it was all his fault in the first place. She couldn't forgive him for something as strange... as... disgusting as swiping out his phone and finding a reason to snap... photographs... of the decaying bodies locked in here... His own green orbs pooled with this sudden fear... Anyone in their right mind would leave him for this. Leave him all alone with just those damn pictures...

Gently, her orbs turned to the screen and caught sight of one of them. Gently, they began to scroll. Gently, a hand moved and touched the numbers on the phone and pulled upward, and upward, and upward, closer to his demise. From the bottom of the album to the top, all of those filthy corpses unraveled to her. He didn't think he'd just keep it a secret forever; he'd tell her eventually... but... He'd finally confessed to her... and only just now... he'd have to let go of that...

Cruel fates...

He'd become so close to this bright, charismatic individual... he listened to her problems when life grew tough and he stayed close to her whenever he could... Was it... a sin... how badly... he wanted to be hers? Was it a sin—and now he was to be punished to even consider this happening for him?

Gently, a toll sounded as she hit the first photo. Her eyes brightened slowly with a shock, no—not shock but—

Recognition.

The first picture he'd taken was of that girl he'd felt so drawn to... and now he knew why. Why he'd snapped when he saw it in that twisted nexus and why the ghost boy had come to save him from it, why any of this had happened.

He never learned if Mayu would forgive him or not. Two pairs of little hands clasped upon her arms and steadily drew her back, first slowly, then with a _crack_ , speed pulsated them on and took her further, further down the hallway of the floor and closer to a doom that he realized would force her into a death just like the one on his phone, which bounced and clattered harmlessly from her pale, little hands. The silvery device that had cursed him and sent her away.

"Mayu... Mayu! No! MAYU!" He was screaming it now, her name.

He couldn't bear it. He chased after those two children who giggled and found this so hilarious, and he bounded further as fast as he could, knowing that he'd never be fast enough to stop it. His glasses shined and flickered and threatened to fall off his face and he didn't care, didn't make any movements against his need to stop this from ever happening, from losing her. He couldn't lose her.

 _CRUNCH._

He'd stepped on his phone. Rendered it useless.

His parents would kill him.

He wanted to die.

"MAYU!" His curt tone skidded across the bloodied walls of the hallway and he pursued for the one he could not bear to lose only to know he would because there was nothing else he could do about it. No way he could stand this and do nothing.

Nobody cared about him like she did. No one. No one at all. How could someone watch that happening to them and not feel compelled to do something about it?

She only came closer to her fate. That gentle, upright, peppy girl would be lost forever to sludge on the wall. It would never be the same. He couldn't stand for this. He couldn't lose her.

The children began high-pitched squeals of giggles, they were so delighted.

His parents hardly looked over him. Doctors, lawyers—nobody in his family really treated for him, noticed him... cared about him. No—that was a lie. His grandfather had.

 _Whooooooshhhh—_

Then he'd died.

And for years before he met her, he was alone.

And now he wasn't alone and she was about to die. He'd finally somehow managed to tell her that she was the best thing that had ever happened to him, this joy that came to him when nothing else did... this reason to go on in life.

Was it a sin to want her like he did? To love her? Was this punishment for his wishes?

 _shh-shhhh—shh-shhh—SHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENN!_

A female in the build of under average height, dressed up in a sunny yellow long-sleeved shirt and deep, dark blue pleated skirt, stripes of pink-and-white knee-high socks connecting to pink slippers, sweet, chocolatey hair, gentle, green eyes, cute little hair pins to hold it in her own special style: fell. She fell and she landed in the arms of the boy who loved her and feared she did not love him back. Feared she was going to hate him now. Because it only made sense the one person he'd ever grow this close to would cast him aside. That he couldn't belong to anyone...

A clash of spirits above halted the death of the girl. None of this was of concern to the boy. All attention focused upon the one who had been dropped and saved from that seal of death. And the fear that she wouldn't care.

Quietly, she stirred. Those orbs gently tucked open.

"Shige-nii..?"

"M-Mayu..." It was a sin... wasn't it... It was a sin... it was a sin... it was so wrong of him... To think that...

"Was that..?"

"It was.  
It's gone now.  
Whatever it was, it's gone now.  
I never want to see it again.

"I know it's too much but... I'm sorry, Mayu..."

And she stirred again, more restlessly. "Too much? Shige-nii, too much?" It pained him to hear that soft voice in such a way. Surely she wouldn't... she couldn't care about him now... "I didn't know that... I'd mean that much to you, Shige-nii... I didn't know it would hurt you that bad, did I..."

Neither hit the stone. They skirted it. Rather not say it at all.

"No one else could mean this much to me," he whispered back slowly. "What I saw... where I was... it must have snapped me...

"Almost every time... we go here... it's you. You're the first one I find, and it reboots this breaking inside of me. Except for the times we meet... which are so... few... and far between..." He sighed softly. "It was torture, to go through that, time and time again..." He'd hated it. He absolutely hated it. And here it was again... here... it was again...

Mayu had situated herself so that she sat across from the boy she so loved, smiling gently and clasping his hands in hers, when she murmured, "Shige-nii... a-are you... crying..?"

Something shining and liquid had tapped against her skin in a small, messy circle. "A-ah..." Yes; the answer was yes; Morishige Sakutaro was crying.

The girl in front of him whispered, "Shige-nii...

"Shige-nii... I love you, Shige-nii..."

He thought he whispered it back, but he was crying and he could hardly hear anything after she said that to him. Those words stayed with him long after they stood up again and began searching for their missing friends, hand in hand. They stayed with him for a long time, and they never left.

Under a nexus of charred bits of wood, a head surged up and forward and caught upon its target, the blue oak paneling tearing apart to allow him up and through. Struggling with stubby, blue paws, the tricera took a few attempts before he snagged and pulled himself up. Then leveling out on the ground above took a few attempts, too, and shaking out the last bits of shavings, he considered himself ready to turn around and crawl back down the stairs. He began the slow turn it took a slow vivosaur to do exactly that when a glowing hand slapped against his hide. No... not really glowing. But glowing enough that he could tell there was something wrong with that hand.

The being connected to that hand happened to be this intriguing, tall person who had grayish strands of hair down to their shoulders with ruby-red beads strung in, and ruby-red glasses to match. And some sort of star hair piece in there, too. Man, girls were weird. He felt grateful he had someone like Dina instead of a down-to-earth type of psychotic accessoryphile. This girl had some strange sort of long-sleeve-and-tie uniform, and a long, dark skirt, and a jacket tied firm around her waist.

Her eyes looked like Dina's when they'd incredibly lacked sleep.  
Girl thought she could just try to stay awake instead of go to bed and have nightmares.  
Cute, but it didn't work like that.

Either she had incredible sleep deprivation, or she looked like what Dina near impersonated. Which was, well, death. This girl had to be dead, only weird girls like Dina tried to stay up for weeks on end. And she had to be... mm... _particularly_ normal. Just about. To a relative scale.

Those dead eyes behind the glasses took a good swipe at him. The girl nodded slightly. "Come with me," she murmured. Trusting Torn much more than the lady, he took stout paces as he backed away from her when a sudden, high-pitched shriek that could only be his so dear buddy in a state of unwillingness below. Very bad. Very painful. The tricera winced. Trikko didn't know what to do about that. "Come with me," she dully repeated, and it sounded like he... might've had no choice. Torn sounded in bad shape, and he couldn't really... do much about him.

He immediately regretted it the moment he took a step forward. He should've gone back. Idiot. Blockhead. He could've saved him. Done _something about it._ But every step channeled him forward, and Trikko had become stuck in the motions. Torn's dying cries went to gasps, and the little girl sobbed until he couldn't tell if she was dying too or just going through incredible shock and sorrow. If this situation wasn't so sorrowful and dire, he'd made a deadpan joke about it being the first because there was no way anyone would feel that upset about Torn.

But he did. Right now, he did. He was that notorious fire-breather's best friend, and he was slowly taking big, stiff steps out of that direction in the curdling instructions of that girl ghost apparition. His mind began to break down, alongside his body. Here he was, steadily marching further and further away from where he'd left his heart: jammed in those floorboards by his best friend. The splinters creeped up on him, and they hurt. Oh. They hurt.

But Trikko... he couldn't do anything about it, as much as he fuc—freaking wanted to. Wincing; he wouldn't resolve to cursing just like his best friend. No... no, he would. He would because he fucking missed him, and it felt creepy as shit to talk like him, but dammit, he was stuck and there was nothing he could damn well do about it, so he may as well curse his bitchy heart out. Torn was right: he was a bastardic bitchhead, dammit. He was all of that and more, and he was leaving the one he cared about most behind.

The more he walked, the more darkness blurred him, the more chatty that girl became. He only caught a few things: _my name is Naho; you're a very strange specimen; you're slow_ , and always, _come with me._

It sickened him how much he'd listen to her. It sickened him, damn straight. It didn't even feel weird to curse like him, he felt just like him.

Trikko could hardly see what sat in front of him. He felt like one of his friends: Reyna. She was a vivosaur like him, only blind and deaf. And man, she was fucking spoiled about it. She used that shit for all it was worth and it pissed him off how much she used to use it against Dina. Damn Reyna. He wouldn't have sounded that mean if he wasn't leaving Torn behind.

That voice of the girl's grew throaty, throbbing in his ears. He felt like he was moving, but his legs had all stopped and collapsed upon themselves. He couldn't even tell what the hell she was saying, just garbled phrases all burnt up in front of him and something cold wrapping around the entity of his throat and choking him for all he was worth and cutting him right open, like he was a fruit for her to open and dine on.

And it didn't even disgust him, one bit.

None of the juices fainted him, and all of her slurping noises were funny, if anything. Maybe he felt tantalizing. Maybe he wanted to eat himself, too. Maybe there was something wrong with him.

Oh, yes, there was. He'd left his best friend behind. He'd left Torn.

Dammit. He'd left Torn.

 _You bastardic bitchhead, dammit. Damn Trikko. You're not a tricera. You're just a fucking monster._

Pieces of blue-scaled entrails could be traced along many of the spaces' interiors, like they were dropped as someone dragged them around and dropped them uselessly.

So useless.

 **WRONG END**

 **Me: PHEW! I really dragged that chapter out! I apologize for its incredibly long length, but here you go! Chapter eight in its entire, crazy, messedupedness.**

 **Trikko: -That was disgusting.-**

 **Torn: leaps into his arms, sobbing -TRIIIKOOOOOOOOOOOOO-**

 **Trikko: -I'm speechless.-**

 **Torn: sobbing noises**

 **Me: How touching.**

 **Trikko: -No, wait, I'm disgusted. There we go.-**

 **Me: Welp, that was the second wrong end of the story! Can you guess what it was? Heheh... well, what am I saying... GAH, I DUNNO. It might've been obvious. xD**

 **Imma pass out now bye**


	9. He was Over

**Torn: -Can you get any fucking dumber?-**

 **Trikko: -I'd appreciate if you didn't use a word describing yourself on me.-**

 **Torn: -Fuck you. Anyways, can you get any fucking stupider?-**

 **Trikko: -What? What is it?-**

 **Dino: -jumps on him- DUUUUUUH, DUH DUH DUH, DUH DUH DUH, DUH DUH DUUUHHHHHHHH!**

 **Me: ewe Wrong end.**

 **Trikko: mild, incoherent grumbling**

 **Torn: -Fucking dumbass.-**

Chapter Nine: He was Over

Snorting at his incompetent friend, though he was admittedly not... not too bad, Trikko did just that: he looked over what he had among him, now that the relief of finding his best friend alive and kicking and not hopelessly trapped had become natural and calming, he found that there was a set of three different lines of wood that looked promising. But... he had three different choices to plug from. One sat slightly above his head in the mesh and wire of old oak, so he could probably pop up that way, and the other two were further away from him: one, crooked, to the far left, another a small climb below where he could mash through and fall his way down.

 _G-gyahhhhhh..._

His head ached a lot more than the itches itched. That became the first prominent fact in the situation below him. As he stood there, feeling like a groggy, bumbling grandfather with a little too much tipsiness on his paws, like he'd gone out with some booze the night before—when the tricera begrudgingly recalled he'd probably been here in this weird place said metaphorical night before—some ultimately loud and scraggly screeches drew his attention like an unpleasantly hot day would moisture. He felt like a puddle of unemployment.

 _Dammit, Trikko! Focus! We need to get you the fuck down from here!_

 _Oh, do we,_ he retorted in his deep grunt, _I thought you wanted me to stay up here._

 _FUCKING SHIT!_ called back his best friend.

Little, tiny, blue-swamped Yuka, like Dina but so palpably not, waggled a hand squirming with pale cuts of fingers. _T-try the boards?_ Just like last time, wasn't it. Final answer—wait... Last time? He angrily twitched a dark orb and snorted to himself about it. These itches really must've been ticking him off the edge.

 _Dammit, Trikko, tell us your options!_

Oh, right, the boards. He had to march his face through one of them and plan his escape. Thinking slowly with his position at hand, it became evident which one would be the safest route: the floorboard above. But then... somehow, a cold, unruly finger stuck into his chest like it just didn't feel right. Like that one reeked of... empty promises. Worse than Torn's empty promises. He once swore he'd never curse again; easy enough to tell where that one went to. That nefarious flamesaur also recommended himself growing used to the whole thing about Dina having found herself a boyfriend from a cold place that nobody mentioned called her heart, which, as much as Torn tried to acquit it, existed, and had real feelings for a real boy that Trikko honestly particularly favored. He wanted her to stay with that boy; Torn wanted her to lose him and never get hormonal female emotions involving romance and kissing ever again.

Quite a troublesome heart-breaker. Trikko stood in the line between Rupert/Dina and, well, the end of it. As close as they wore, he fretted that would be a line they may never be able to cross out.

That'd be annoying. Trikko planned that those two lovely specimen would, you know, get together, married, have babies, all of that romantic junk. And Torn, he just had to step aside and accept the fact. Titter, titter.

 _Uh. Trikko. Seriously. What the hell are your options and what can we do to help you._

 _Errrr..._ Oh, yeah, he'd forgotten. He got somewhat fierce and passionate in the whole aspect of Dina and her boyfriend and not allowing Torn to ruin it. Grunting, Trikko attempted at intellectual responding to the prior posed question. _Well, I can go left or I can go down._ That whole plan on just climbing upward... appeared unbearably simple. No falling. No jumping around all that much... it felt wrong, strangely, as weird as it was. So left or down had become his choices. That wasn't logic, but... He sure hoped he'd get it right... though then again, it wouldn't really matter after this was over.

Still... that corpse... it was bright as day in his watery orbs. That first one. That dead body in the bone-and-meat formation of a human which could mean one thing and one thing only that Rupert and Dina both posed chances of losing their lives here, as most likely did Torn and Trikko and the stray girl thing his fiery friend had picked up along the way, so maybe his chances... would something... bad... no, wrong... would something hysterically wrong happen if he took the... wrong path? No, Trikko, no, he snorted at himself, this was stupid. Rationalize the situation. Logic. Skill. Use your mind, not your heart, that won't bring you anywhere in a mess like this.

It was logic that Rupert and Dina had to be together.  
Logic that he and Torn were best friends.  
Logic, logic, logic. If Trikko listened to his saving grace, he'd figure it out.

Facts never lied. Don't forget, he reminded softly. Well, considering his following, after the rowdy ruckus of a best friend howled out his answer to go left and the stray girl offered some bubbling nod to which her plumes of purple-brown hair stuck out some at it, and again considering his following, as there was no way he'd listen to the wild guesses of two specimen alone, that had to be along the lines of suicide, especially comparing who those specimen happened to be—his dear friend with a painful lack of smarts and of course the stray girl he didn't even know whose name he'd already forgotten—Trikko proceeded to go left. Stubby blue-scaled feet waddled and worked their way back from the ripping break of holes that had dug into his skin with their itchy tendrils and took him on a slow, somewhat magical trip down the hallway up above, then a sharp curve right, and the sudden fall as his weight snapped a few bits of the ceiling.

 _CRUNCH!_

Wood on wood rubbed in chipping pieces and rusted, overused iron, as well as a poking sensation arcing up and down his spine and hind legs which made disturbing popping and cracking noises as they bent and he took his unfortunate dip, sending Trikko free-falling through the air in hopeless spirals of tipsy-turvy sickness that seemed to slow around him, like he'd refracted into a puddle of water.

A bright, blue-of-white freak show of color blared into his eyes and blinded him, burning the sockets straight out of their skin and giving him oozing little holes in his face. His hind legs snapped open, one of them falling back and staying up in the ceiling as he crumbled and his body pieced apart on its own like a poorly-made puzzle, jigsaws of meaty globules cascading down upon the floor in a hot, steamy, wet mess, splattering and covering the ends of the hall. It burst with an awful, rancid smell and left no sign of what could have been the creature who had been fully conscious and aware just moments before. Just a pulpy, red mess: completely indistinguishable.

Besides the cries coming from just up the stairs, where big, yellow eyes—terrified, yellow eyes out of their mind—saw the entire scene play out over and over forever in his head.

 **WRONG END**

* * *

 _Somewhere nearby,_ a piteous cackle took sadistic joy in the thought of what had happened. A black little spirit, tipping on its toes over the edge of fate and smirking at what it had seen.

"That inconsiderate bitch!" it glowered happily, "so stupid and foul and icky! Will it keep playing silly games with me? It's funny, but... but damn! It's not doing anything at all but failing over and over again. Jeez—fucking retarded..." A titter. Childish titter, marked with the sarcastic clapping of tiny, clammy hands pattered together. It slowly became hysterical. " _Bastardic bitchhead, dammit... You bastardic bitchhead..._

" _Dammit..."_

He was so hysterical.

* * *

Snorting at his incompetent friend, though he was admittedly not... not too bad, Trikko did just that: he looked over what he had among him, now that the relief of finding his best friend alive and kicking and not hopelessly trapped had become natural and calming, he found that there was a set of three different lines of wood that looked promising. But... he had three different choices to plug from. One sat slightly above his head in the mesh and wire of old oak, so he could probably pop up that way, and the other two were further away from him: one, crooked, to the far left, another a small climb below where he could mash through and fall his way down.

 _Uuurrrrrrrggghhhhhhhh..._

He felt absolutely awful. Nothing could describe this bedheaded emotion of grogginess and burning shame and itchiness and the overall feeling of morose discountenance more or less swooning up the space in his entire body. What did he do to himself? Angrily blinking and snorting and fumbling around, slow to realize his eyes were crusted over like he'd fallen into a deep, troublesome sleep. Which he might have; his memories were as dissected as fossils could come from his world, and oh, he felt plain sick to his swollen stomach.

Awkwardly, disgustedly bumbling around on all fours and rocking himself in some feeble attempt to recover himself, two distinct voices began squealing at him like he'd done something wrong and it was their job to account for this, their job to fix this unlovely mess of his he'd gone and mucked up. Thing was, his brain so full of concrete as notes, he didn't really catch track of his situation and Trikko abruptly cascaded forward, hearing what may have been bones snapping around him and feeling the pungent rush of what could have been stale, cold—dead—air. He couldn't tell.

 _ANCIENTS DAMN, TRIKKO! CALM YOUR SHIT DOWN!_

One of the voices lashed out at him like a fang and caught him cold in the gut. Now that one he could recognize. Sure, it'd taken him some discordant, malfunctioning and otherwise pathetic-of-him moments, but that one, that he would be able to shout the name of in a heart beat, disgruntled or no. _TORN! WHAT'S GOING ON!_

 _WHY THE FUCK ARE YOUR EYES SO MESSED UP, DAMMIT? I THOUGHT YOU COULD SEE US FINE?_

 _WHAT ARE WE YELLING ABOUT ANYWAYS?!_

 _EEEEEK!_ The third voice effectively cut their southern edge of the platform Trikko stood on in two. His head split a little more. An angry, blistery-red paw came in contact with sensitive material and scrubbed at the squishy fabric that made into his body, furiously washing away that dry goop in his eyes. It felt strangely soothing to have a warm bit of material wrapped over his closed, blue lid. _P-please stop yelling... Y-Yuka doesn't lie it..._

Oh—oh yeah. Yuka. That stray girl Torn had picked up. The memories came flooding back: though torn as bad as his friend's, which had some history about it: he didn't even remember where his own name came from. He and Dina both shared that whole amnesiac role. So... definite fragments of moments came back bitten, but others felt particularly whole and open. Mostly any recollection from falling into that hole in the ground back then in the middle of the night to when he and Torn found that other hole in this weird building's ground, which Torn promised to reunite them and then... things got dicey.

He didn't remember what kind of dicey: a bad dicey. An unfortunate sort of dicey that proclaimed revolution and failure and what could have been... was it... death? Oh. Death. Death was a bad thing. It didn't happen back at home and when it did it was from old age—some thousand years, as in, so, you know—so this whole new concept took Trikko nearly off his stubby, blurry feet—though everything was blurry in his newly-recovered eyesight. It was like he'd been tossed a math test, only none of the required criteria was on it, just stuff from the older age that he hadn't even known about until he saw it like some breakfast cereal's name on the cover of his paper.

Death... Now, Trikko didn't enjoy the use of simple sentences, but there was simply no other way to say it: death was a bad thing. Bright and simple came back that memory fetched from further before the hole and things getting dicey. They'd found that slim, tiny, not even seven-feet-long, bipedal corpse which obviously had to be a human. And they knew two humans that came to mind when thinking about this place and losing people and the risk of this new _death_. How horridly close it was. Like the tricera could turn around and get his face breathed all over by it, by death. Rancid, disgusting: a tidal wave of no. But then again, he and Torn were vivosaurs, so maybe they could stand a chance. He sure as heck hoped that chance wouldn't get put into risk and failure if that stupid stray girl he hardly even knew had her life hanging on the line. He didn't want to hand those two lives over to chance, his and Torn's, he and his best friend. That idea wasn't the most... pleasant.

Quaintly observing the wooden ground below him, blinking redundantly for a little too much assurance he would see all fine and dandy, the stout, blue quadrupedal found those dark-hued floors of creaky wood the most interesting, and his sore toes felt like they hadn't slapped down on the actual floor in some unrecommended allot of time. Too much. Sighing with a sudden breath of relief, thin, honest-to-goodness willowy, red-scaled arms draped over his head and tried to hug him. Yeah, vivosaurs didn't hug well. _I dunno why, but I feel remarkably fucking fantastic that you're on the ground now!_

 _Yeah... me too._ Trikko shrugged casually, playing it logical and gruff as he always did. _Weird, isn't it._ He ended up inconveniently smiling at that last part, to which that little girl's big, icy blue eyes caught onto. Not big and cold and cheerful and also spunky like this dark-skinned girl he'd happened to meet at some point in life, Jkonna, but... warm. Oddly lukewarm and not boisterously cheerful but calm and gentle and mild. Good. He needed someone mild.

He bit his lip at her to show she wouldn't speak of this, and to his surprise, the thing nodded. Okay. Good thing.

 _Should Yuka and Trikko and Torn go exploring again?_ she offered meekly. He would've remembered going this exploring with someone besides Torn but in the end decided she knew who they were looking for in the first place and had accepted that the stout vivosaur would join them, which of course he would, he was Trikko, Torn was his best friend. Had this girl not been by the side of a certain nefarious dimetro, he would've not given her a second glance. But she was. So these things happened.

Offering a brisk nod around the pale-and-blue fan around Trikko's head like frosted flower petals, not that he'd ever made a decent piece of petty vegetation, Torn gently released his grinding but warm hold and the two followed after the thing as they all turned around and scaled up the stairs together. Hm. For some reason, going down them felt like too chilly a topic to divulge, and his yellow-eyed companion looked a little meek on the thought of doing it. Perhaps he and the thing had been down there before and found a few unsanitary topics.

Their tails swished at an untimely chime and entwined a few times a little hastily, slapping back with the spurt of red and blue scales: not an easy feat as Trikko's tail was an unruly, blue stump and Torn's decorated with his lines of a sail that probably didn't make it easy to sashay about in. They tailed after that thing with the billowing, darker blue costume that so tenderly reminded the tricera of an orange-haired girl who wore a jumpsuit with pieces similar to that color, so similar, that it pained him dearly to stare at it. He'd never mention but he did miss Dina some. Just... just a little. Obviously. He wasn't soft; he was Trikko.

He didn't take it into much account he was following a little stray thing around the place, mostly because if they needed to bolt they could bolt still, and if any traps were sprung she'd get chewed up by them first. He could think any sort of violent thought he'd like to because as a vivosaur, he, and Torn as well, both knew how to keep the right thoughts from being heard by everyone else. At some point he quietly asked why they were stuck with this girl anyways, to which Torn smirked and replied that his best friend had no soul. Contemptuous of him.

Whatever, Torn, as long as he wasn't a cute and cuddly marshmallow of emotions. They both called Dina that in their heads and somehow she never even realized, which just made it a little funnier. Still, she was cuddly: she got someone as hardhearted—well, at first—as Rupert to somehow like, like her. That was a feat. That was a considerable feat, marginally close to the mindset of impossible.

Sighing, the two ensconced into the cold, twitchy silence of the building Torn called school. Heavenly Host Elementary School, where little kids learned things, apparently. And... older ones would check out older, bigger schools, until they reached a certain age and were deemed adults. He had no idea when the people from his place were considered actual adults, old enough and everything, because there wasn't really an obvious line and for all the heck he could possibly know, his bond as well as her friends might as well have actually been just teenagers, or not even.

He had no idea.

Snorting, his horned face turned and poised to the left, where he caught a chunk of words or scribbles strangled across a page of paper, just sitting there on the punched-out wall. Somehow stuck in place. He couldn't read, and Torn couldn't read, but the thing could, so when he pointed it out she wandered around and mumbled over its big words aloud for all to comprehend. _'Keep watch. Remember where everything is, or it'll all close in on you and leave you trapped forever. Your goal is to escape, not to let this get to you. Don't get enclosed.' H-hmm! Y-Yuka wonders what... that might mean..._

 _No fucking idea. Trikko?  
_

Yeah, he was more or less the smartest one in the group: Trikko was used to it. _I would presume that this is in a metaphorical sense, not just lively truth, like it's trying to stretch over multiple topics to make sure we're well-versed in all parts. So... my gander is that this is based off of when somebody was either stumbled into a dead end, perhaps involving fallen floors or holes, or they were closed off by authoritative figures, locking them in. We should be careful to consider which areas are off-limits and how to keep ourselves open and ready for escape at any time._

He paused, then, _Raise your hand if you need the simpleton version._ All present did so. He thought this might happen. _Keep our group in bigger areas and don't get trapped near holes or dead ends. And if there's stuff, anything at all, trying to lock us in, find a way out of that. Don't get stuck in a box, whether it's a real box or something much bigger, much, much bigger..._

 _Oh, but aren't we already trapped in a box?_

 _Oh yeah, we kinda are, Yuka! Nice going, kid!_ Torn's bright, large yellow eyes shone back on Trikko. _Buuuuut I'm guessing that's not the shit Trikko means. He's not talking about the entire school, just, like, all the tiny shits and bitches around the place that're sure to try and fuck us over. Let's not get into any snafus here._

Sighing, the tricera nodded grudgingly at this and the trio continued on. That stray... he didn't know what it was, but seeing that... that girl in the oversized smock, and how much it hurt to be reminded of his own life and his own family... in a weird way, he could feel the connection threading through her, and how she must've felt without any of the others she was looking for her to be by her side. Still, it was just a glittering, fateful string of thread tying through her. Trikko had it. Everyone had it. Even that black monster that consumed him and made him angry at Torn had it.

Wait, what was he just thinking about? Suddenly Trikko's thoughts went skew and he ground at his teeth, sighing again, contemptuously, unpleasantly, like the curmudgeon he was. The mood noticeably dampened as they trudged onward through what felt like an atmosphere of pure, gel-like sludge. The tricera was tired, and he felt most positively done at points. It was hard to raise his head. That last thought, whether he could be reprimanded or not, had done a doozy of effect, and it'd begun to get to him. Snorting and sighing and feeling somewhat apathetic, the tricera had nothing to do but to follow and hang onto something that did mean something to him, more than something, more like everything, which was the nefarious dimetro in front of him.

Was Torn avoiding him? That thought came out of nowhere just like the other one had left, and it began to eat at him. Was... was he? Every jolting step his willowy, red legs scaled for felt like another inching notion away from his best friend, and soon Trikko didn't know who to trust, only that it felt like his own best friend didn't like him anymore. Admittedly, the tricera would never admit to it, but inside of his blue soul was a heart full of fears. He'd never say anything about the ones he had, never admit to them, never own them up, no matter what.

Something that was hot like anger curled up his throat. Sure looked like it, spiked like it, seemed black and sinewy like the monster that had crawled inside of him earlier—that thing just glancing off the edges of memory. But it disguised the true intention below, what really made up that whole bunch of ugly nonsense and what Trikko truly felt, and why every last joint inside of his stout body was now so very, very cold. And why he felt scared. No, he didn't feel scared. _He was scared; he was so very, very scared._

Jealousy. He didn't know what he was thinking. Try to make Torn jealous? He didn't know. It just sort of came out of the silent, wood-wrenched hallway. Their group had paused as they'd filed to the left and up a hallway toward a third floor without a hole jutting through it, and their precarious scoot through it caused him to splutter some words that sounded deep-voiced and strong but that was just the outside: _Yuka_ , he remembered her name, of course, just never used it, _do you happen to know who Rupert or Dina may be? Do you think you may have met them before?_

Of course Torn wouldn't react. Instead the red head flashed back with yellow eyes of concern. He was just as worried about the orange-haired one tossed into the conversation.

Man, Trikko just felt awful. Like that argument he'd had earlier. Like there was something wrong with him or... ugh. _Ummmm... Yuka doesn't think so. She saw an orange-haired girl once, but the orange-haired girl had no friends... and she was real, real tough... she had lots of battle wounds that were already healed and she took on Mr. Kizami like splat! It was really, really amazing! So... um..._

 _Yeah, that sounds nothing like her._ A tangent the color of oil then stuck slick to his throat, about to spill out and rot Torn's mind with the sound of that one R-name that he so despised and couldn't stand the thought of listening to on loop, on any loop, when the rickety old staircase came to view, bumbling upward. He silently stared at it, feeling about to gag like hair plugged up his windpipe and it was taking over his entire body. This place had something messed up about it. Something incredibly... he just knew... it was _it was wrong here._

Like there were hunters rung around this atrocity. Monsters. Predators—predators... to their prey.

This whole place had an uneven, illogical vibe sewn in it.

 _Uhh, we proollly shouldn't leave ourselves to be stranded here or anything. Ey, Yuka, how about you'n'I go up and we leave my fantastic bastardic bitchhead dammit to watch over us? Couurrse, only if my favorite buster in the whole world agrees with it._ Hearing Torn's voice... somehow, it made him gag. Something was wrong with him. Something was very, very wrong with him. This entire place felt so messed up. It gave Trikko headaches. Something hazy felt like it was eating away at his mind and terminating all of his memories, just oozing on in and staining and wrecking like it could do that.

Small tears fed into his eyes. Nobody saw them because he turned his head and let them drain and they mixed in, as a water-element vivosaur, perfectly with his complexion. Not a soul would know better. And he spoke with his mind, not his vocal cords. No one would tell the difference. _Course. As long as you don't let my best friend go and get himself killed. We need that idiot on our team..._

As the duo so cheerfully scaled those stairs, pale, bare toes like Dina's but not calloused and slowly filling with splinters she usually never mentioned and four thick feet of flaming red that fell on behind, those yellow eyes continually turning back and catching glances of his favorite soul in the world, just to make sure nothing would happen to him, because both didn't like that whole idea of losing the other, even Trikko, even what was going on with him, they let him be and he stayed.

All was quiet.

Somehow settled, the floorboards sank into their original composure with a new sense of belonging. Holes in walls and ceilings and grounds alike didn't so much as whistle. They almost felt like they weren't even out of place, pockmarked and ranked beyond submission. The rank odor usually befalling the hallways had all but peeled away. In fact, as Trikko glimpsed around, he began to recognize a few strangely fresh objects, still and... feeling perfect as they sat there in the room. Bodies. Incredibly fresh and righteous. Just... peachy-skinned and in supple, lubricant matter screaming of soft sebum, splattered with red and perfectly proportioned and pictured. And fresh. So indescribably fresh if he turned around they could have hopped up and started living again or something, though all the facts drowned that possibility. But it... it _looked_ like it. They didn't even make a sound as they sat there, dead and fresh and rotting with life brimming at still-warm fingertips.

All was quiet.

Eerily quiet.

His foot skidded forward as his throat tossed his entire, wracking body into convulsions, convulsions that smacked him into the wall and caused his face to drown in blushes of red like he was Dina when she talked to Rupert only she was dying—and he was dying and he could feel his life violently fluttering in his stubby grasp like the storm outside was now inside, inside of _him_ , and it wanted to kill him. _Kill him._ As in _dead._ As in _kill him,_ so he could never return—never see Torn. He couldn't do that—never see Dina. That was impossible—never see Rupert. Life crushed him upright open and he grew weak and woozy and pale on his own and the world felt like a great big black bowl that was filled with nothing but pitch darkness that consumed at him.

Which was impossible.

It was quiet.

He was dying but it was quiet.

Like death had gotten its grip knocked, everything spanned into him at full-force, blowing into his lungs as Trikko began to fight it. He didn't know what he was doing but he was fighting and he convulsed and flailed and his mouth dribbled with disgusting, black goo but he was fighting because death meant a lot of things, most of all something he'd never mention that he couldn't live without. It tore—it had torn him—to think of losing it. That wasn't allowed. That so wasn't allowed. And now he fought with what didn't feel like logic, because all the odds pointed away, but with something else that he also would never mention in the entire lifespan of how long he would ever exist, and that was now drastically cutting away from him. He choked and gagged, sprawled out on the ground, now forcing sound into a silent, dull world that sprang with emotions, color, feeling, smell, taste, sight.

Everything came at him at once and the process of choking and spitting became that much more complex. Stubby paws gripped through splintered bits of shattered wood, connected somewhere to an arched back and stubby tail flung up into the atmosphere, his horned head doubled over and a variety of his body thrust into violent proportions. He'd scraped against the walls in some areas and blood spilled like ink from his parchment paper of a body inscribed with his death and whenever it may come. Only it wasn't red. At first, sure, a bright red berry: soon to rotten coloring that shimmied down his stout limbs and suggested poisoning, rot, disgust.

A pink tongue lolled straight out and stretched as far as it could possibly go; maybe longer.

Horns embedded into the blue head grazed with the flush of a red-scaled coating rammed into walls and ceiling alike, puncturing all the more holes and somehow failing to cause enough of a ruckus to send his favorite guy in the whole world to come down and save him from this ugly, ironic demise that seemed to have everything to do with a blunt, palpable, embarrassingly obvious memory of a fight that caused two souls to split up.

Trikko retched, and he retched, and he retched, and he retched: a wretched sight, arched and doubled over and convulsed and blackened in spots with hair-like tendrils of what should have been blood hanging around the place. He smelled like a faintly metallic and full-blown chemical. Ammonia, probably. And gore. Always gore.

He retched, and he retched, and he retched: and the beginnings of something tailed out of the pink carpet of an exit. His tongue flickered, flinched, gagged back at whatever had hit it and the nauseous taste enveloping it, but there could be no going back now or he'd never make it. Trikko understood none of the logic in this increasingly-worrying nexus full of unbelievable spaces and a fight with his best friend evoked by some sort of... of _darkening substance_ that festered in him somehow as well as his own fears and failures of will. He couldn't. Simply couldn't. Where did the logic go? It didn't. And something this stumpy blue reptile knew was logic. He was hopelessly lost.

And he retched.

And he was winning a battle that couldn't even exist.

And he retched.

He just wanted to go home. He wanted to be where he knew things and his friends existed and he felt secure in spot, and everything made sense and fit into the rules of logic. This drove him crazy.

And he retched. And a pool of black, orb-like droppings coalesced just below his curving chin into the ground. His heart took a big, long beat for a whole entire moment and nothing moved. Everything stilled. He'd done it. Somehow, for now, he'd actually done it. His festering wounds dropped dead and fell limp from him as if to never show another recording of what had happened, and his curdling maelstrom of a stomach settled considerably, and he honest-to-goodness felt... better. The forewarning of a limit, of some methodical and treacherous clock tick, tick, ticking away at his soul had been plucked clean, and for now, Trikko was completely okay.

Voices.

 _Yuka! Yuukaa!_ Quiet, but still there. _Holy hell, hang on! You're not allowed to fucking die!_

 _T-torrnnnn! No! Don't you die! Don't you leave us here! What about Trikko? U-waah...haahahhhhhh..._

A violent pause that fell hard on his weakened shoulders. Yuka, screamed his mind.

Then the big noise came, and it threw him right off his feet.

 _CRUNCH! CRUNCH—CRUNCH—CRUNCH..._ Something clean and heavy swung right over his horned head and something not such a freakish bludgeon landed at him, squishy and soft and tiny and oh it's the stray. It was Yuka. She had...

She'd cared.

Taking off hard as he could down the patterned hallways, Trikko barged and flung himself to a direct right, slamming and topping off both the door and part of the crumbling, brown wall that fell back to his lunge and sent he and the little girl on his back into some room brimming with desks. A skittering of hot paws and cusses strung by after them, and the three thrust into another door, this in the far back of of the room, and hid together, cramped and ugly in their fortysomethinglong bodies smushed against Yuka and in position to hide.

One second.  
Two seconds.  
Three.  
Four.  
Five.

One minute ticked by in a tepid rush. No sounds could be heard of all kind except the random shift in position or hot breath someone had. Trikko began to realize that something smelled, and it was an aura around him—the rot. Nobody mentioned it. In the mostly-darkness, his cheeks puffed with red. Nobody noticed. He felt nothing. He obviously felt no kindness from them, no, not at all...

Five minutes came in hot pursuit. _Can I get an explanation?_ His voice deep, gruff, and strained in such a whisper, Trikko deliberated that answers could wait no longer. Something big had just happened and left him trapped with Yuka and his favorite soul in the whole world, and he'd rather like some reasoning. This place had to be at least a little rational.

 _We found some small library room,_ offered Torn in chewed-off bites of dialogue plagued in deep breathing, _and so we like fucking went in it, and then this fucking gigantic bitch of a man burst through a wall or something and he had this hammer and he was fucking huge and scary, course, not as huge and scary as us, but for Yuka... Anyway his hammer tore off some of my tail and it was like oh fuck we'd better go. It's also still bleeding. Damn. You?  
_

How was he supposed to explain it? It was already proven scores of times over this place made no sense. Comforting yellow eyes glittered from across the cramped chamber, and it helped some. _I officially can't make sense of the facts. It's the hardest thing that's ever happened to me._ Harder than... anything he'd ever gone through before. No way anything else could have been that difficult. Trikko garnered and made use of facts; this was sickening and warped and none of it made sense. No pattern. No reason. Just a whole bunch of... dry, open-ended questioning. _And something happened to me earlier that was... pretty self-explanatory._

 _Mind telling us about it?_ He worded it gently. Somehow, even in times as stretched as these, Trikko could trust Torn. But he... didn't... particularly like the girl in there with them and... he never really did these things. And he didn't know how to say it. How to explain the jealousy, the grief, the hate that had overcome him. The anger... All stemming from his dumb fears.

So quietly the gruff one ended effectively with, _It wasn't much... I think I'm okay. Just... this place is messed up._

Silence pursuing and the lack of situational suspense proclaiming a serene timing, the tricera and dimetro began to squat and squiggle around in attempts to balance themselves to get out of the chamber. _Splort_ went a strangely warm spot on the ground when Trikko's foot shoved against it, and _splat_ squeaked something else that Torn must've rubbed off at. His thick, yellow orbs cascaded around worriedly and voiced his concern for Yuka to get out first so nobody steps on her, then, as the door slid in place behind them and the girl had been left in a safer point, waiting, Torn whispered, _Trikko. We're stepping on fresh corpses._

 _Ah... Torn_... Nope. He had to summarize it. _When I waited for you, in that fated memory I couldn't remember—you know—I found this sort of darkening substance that was... taking over me... and, this time around, this last wait... it came out of me and... and I saw really... terrifyingly alive corpses, and you know how I feel about paradox statements, Torn, you know how I fee—_

The breath in his lungs gave away as pressure squeezed all around him. Trikko's legs gave, digging their blue points into four different piles of squishy remains that sent a sudden shiver spiking down his spine. He'd never felt anything like it to be... to be this close to... death. To this sort of place where it was so obvious that someone had slit throats, stomachs, heads, limbs, something invaluable to the whole organ systems of life and caused that entire circle to open, and to spill out with darkness and loss and death—he was trapped, oh gosh, they were trapped. It reminded him of sparking thoughts that spluttered and ran too fast for him to keep up, and again something monstrous pumped out of his unsettled stomach and his stumpy paws scrabbled for anything, anything at all, and Torn actually hugged him and they stayed like that for a while.

It eventually felt better again. _Trikko?_

 _...Torn..?_ He winced at the sound of his weak, raspy tone.

 _I'm not letting you die on me, buddy. I'm not gonna fucking let you die on me. That's... n-not allowed, okay. That's not allowed._

 _Torn..._

 _It's not. It's not... I... I won't... let it happen. Out of all the damned curses infecting this dump, I don't know what the hell is happening to you, but I'm not... going... to let you die. I can't. I fucking can't. You can't... die... dammit..._

And still, the increasingly pathetic tricera didn't know what to say. _Torn..._ he whispered, _Torn..._

Sucking in bigger, manlier breaths and trying to retain to themselves, both covered in generous amounts of red slush that had resulted from what happened inside of that closet sort of room flooded with fresh corpses, fresh... dead people who had just uttered their last breaths, the two best friends removed themselves from that smelly cavern and reentered the semi-darkness of this... room full of tiny tables. Desks, he thought Torn or Yuka or someone had called it. Desks...

Small legs dangling from a desk which she sat on, the little girl waved them over and mumbled, _Yuka found out that she and Trikko and Torn are in classroom 1-A... It smells stinky in here,_ she as well quipped. _Very stinky._

 _It does,_ added Torn, to which Trikko nodded lightly. It did stink. Like... a slightly metallic tang... mixed in with hot chemicals and an overdose of gore spiraling out, and the overall scent was inducing a headache he didn't want to restart like some game the school played. Ammonia, again. This place reeked of ammonia, and here it smelled the most rank of a scent. It drove him practically senseless.

They all sort of saw the tiny thing strut through the wall and into this classroom thing at the same time. It emitted a cyan glow that swamped most of its direct surroundings, and it had a stump of a head and only blurry images above. The bottom of her mouth remained; her tongue did not. Peculiar... if it wasn't so horrible and creepy he could have stopped to ponder this missing organ, but the thought made a brutal curdling in his stomach and he stumbled back through the hole in the wall he'd made himself, his best friend and Yuka tailing ravenously over his footsteps, which became a fluttered mix of thumps and smacks on dry ground as they splintered on.

He had to try to keep it all straight or they would get trapped all over again. Only pieces felt missing... pieces really... felt missing... So blindly, Trikko steered them forward, past two lanes of the paper-lined doors on either side and sending them into that other hallway completing the second floor. Some earthquake may have occurred at some time—the exact measurements must've been at an emotional moment or they would have remembered such a remarkable occasion—and to the left and up, that hole had been ominously repaired. But the stout, blue quadrupedal in front went to the right, because he felt better about it.

He swore he heard a snipping sound after he passed by the second classroom there. That one in particular had a rank scent attached to it, like... medicine. Ulgh, medicine, he didn't even know what medicine was until he'd come in contact with this strange nexus. That room hadn't appealed to him prior, so they went on, down the stairs that Trikko had been captured in just some few allot of hours ago and steadily into the wrath of the first floor. All the tricera knew was that the longer their route wound, the more fresh, dead bodies they came upon. It was... a growing sense of both concern and dread. Where would they find their souls at the end? What might they find at the end? The killer..?

Words, like from a prophecy, came right at him.

Rem _embe_ r wh _ere_ eve _rything_ i _s,_  
o _r it'll all clos_ e in on you a _nd_ lea _ve yo_ u trap _ped_ for _ever_.  
Yo _ur g_ oal is to _esc_ ape,  
not to le _t this get to_ you.

They steadily took over more and more of his mind exponentially, punching in on him, the more steps he took. Trikko led on. Nobody mentioned it, but he could hear the words overflowing in the fiery dimetro's head, probably a forewarning of his. Nowhere else to go, no other path to take, they had to... had to press on. Reaching a solid concreted corner in some area marked with a steel door, he hesitantly raised a paw when something cyan lunged out at him from the very real metallic seal, and something rammed on from the side at such an awkward wall-headed angle that they were going to collide. He could feel fate slipping in and trapping and snagging in at his scales as a tiny, bipedal figure with a smudge right over its face lurched and managed to peel an entire section of scales right off his body.

Words ripped from someone else's lips, sent him spiraling across and shrunken into a tiny form, even shorter than Yuka herself, and slammed unhealed against the wall with the school's unhinging groan. It shattered across him and the tricera couldn't see much but he felt words crushing down his spine as pale little fingers, by the earsplitting instruction of a cooling soul about to flee from its destructed body, annihilated home, scorched chambers, that he couldn't do this. And to run. Always to run.

A trap, went Trikko's numb mind. A trap.

The ghost girl on the second floor. The thing on the third. He didn't know there was a little boy and a little girl on the first. He didn't know they were there, but they were, and now the stray was taking him away from something he couldn't see. But somehow, he felt this stench of shadowing dread that this wasn't anywhere near Torn's last breath, and... those weren't his final killers.

There was something organizing this. Something bad. Something big, uniting everyone and everything against it and it was the sole monster, nothing else. He surrendered to this tiny eighth grader and let her take him away, trusting her to use the right path and finish this purgatorial scene. He only recalled blobs of color and the loss of warmth in the hallway, and the loss of something much more important, all the way down to the depths of his soul.

But he didn't voice it. He couldn't.

Trikko was terrified.

Wordlessly, a child scarred with the blinding sight of this heroic soul who had gone and died for his favorite entity in the whole entire world just so that he could live a little longer instead, she stared on. Her eyes were cold and glassy with unfed tears that gently began to stroke down her face. She most certainly couldn't feel them, couldn't even tell they were there. But it felt wrong, what she'd just seen. Finding all of the warm corpses leading up to the demise meant something scary, but it was another thing to be right there and watch as someone with connections to your own soul strung in their silvery lifeline went and was cut down to the core like that. Her sense of reality had been pitched over. Her sense of feeling numbed at the time.

Many monsters were chasing her right now. Her and the tricera beside her who eventually swooned to a larger stance. But he looked completely washed. She didn't say anything; he didn't say anything. They both felt it cloaked around them like a thick blanket, this loneliness. This empty space by their side that was supposed to be filled—but it _wasn't. It wasn't filled!_ Big brother, she cried to herself, it wasn't filled! Things... how did things do that..? How... was that... fair..? How could this... How...

No question could ask it.

As their souls stumbled past a recognizable room, something else made a soft _snip,_ like an old lady was inside and she had knitting needles, calmly stitching something full of grandma love. They didn't know this, but the old lady had a name. She was made up of this darkening, as Trikko tacitly labeled it, and felt close to home when the soul strutted by. Yuka would soon learn that name.

She would also learn something else.

For what had to be forced hours set in ice and the sense of nothingness, they wandered. The empty and new corpses only added, and the older ones began to stale. Like some sort of killer was with them. And the longer their path went, the more bodies that fell. But eventually, they came to another fork in the road that led up to stairs towards bathrooms and fell with a dead end.

A very dead end.

Because a fortysomethinglong corpse blocked it.

When the creature stepped out, it moved with impeccable timing and sent a clean line through Yuka's tiny wrist. The one beside her had nothing else to do but butt her off and see that face, that dead face and the yellow eyes turned red and black with putrid coloring, something hot began to fuel him. He wasn't scared anymore: this was a red-hot sense of reason. This began to waken him again, bring him back to life. He still had friends to save. He still had others to bring back that he knew Torn would be smacking at him to do. Seeing that corpse reminded him of it. Seeing what some foul being had done to him reminded him of it.

The last of his efforts soon became used on protecting the stray he'd grown to trust in a way he never thought possible. But here came life, pressing straight through him as he attacked and defended and the girl ran away at his own, deep-voiced bellows, and that she did do. Trikko would protect the stray Torn had found, and he wasn't going to let this killer that had dragged his best friend's corpse up here stop him from doing it.

Eventually he was depleted, and left the creature to hack away at his host-lacking body. His cyan self gently flew to the skies, or as high as it'd go, which bumped into the ceiling. Nothing else but the pain of death to bring him down, until another cyan string came with him, and as their glittery selves strung by, they caught sight of something.

The little girl they'd protected had a golden lifeline strung to her. A few others connected nearby, and as they fluttered, it seemed that two in particular collided with their silvery, deathly selves and sent them sprawling.

Perhaps something happened.

But this was not what took the soul's attention away. Its face turned to the side and felt dying breaths being emitted from its fallen, blueberry remains. Final releases. And his eyes that only slightly worked looked up and caught with a gentle brown that had gone still over. Cold. Stiff. Empty.

His voice came back in a sudden string of breath, even though he knew he was already dead and this was going to end him and the girl, the killer, she was completely deaf to the world. Her body full of stains of red and organs from her uncountable array of victims, she marked her dear Trikko as her next one.

She could not see him, and even if she realized what she was doing, there was no way she would have ended.

 **Me: ewe I wonder what that was all about.**

 **Trikko: -Aw, I died.-**

 **Torn: -DAMMIT, I DIED.-**

 **Yuka: -begins sobbing-**

 **Me: guys calm doowwnnnnnnnnn**

 **Trikko/Torn: -Nooooooouhhhhhhhhhh-**

 **Me: -w- …**

 **Rupert: -sighs- I suppose this would ha-**

 **Torn: -AHHH FUCKING RUPERT DIED TOO!-**

 **Trikko: -RUPERT, NOOOOOOO!- fanboy sobbing because half of his ship has died**


	10. IV: She was Provoked

**Me: So who felt that chapter was deep?**

 **Trikko: -It was sadistic.-**

 **Me: I'm not gonna say how I feel about your response. uwu CHILD.**

 **Trikko: sigh**

 **Me: I dunno if anyone else got chills and their stomachs got a little sore (or maybe that was just because school), but aahhhhh... -melts-**

 **Trikko: -There she goes again.- titters**

Corpse Party: Broken Bones: Bloody Bonds IV

Chapter Ten: She was Provoked

Spine-bending jeers floated into the mainstream of the school and its gelid, sorely uncaring atmosphere.

" _AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHAAHHAHAAAAAHhhhahahhhhHAAAAAAAHAHHHhahaaaAAAHAHhahhaaaaHHAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"_

Not a malevolent spirit raised suspicious.

This was the usual.

" _HELP ME  
"SAVE ME  
_" _PLEASE...  
N-nn-nnnNNOOOOO!"_

Slicing into a snarl of darkness was the cold touch of light. Like a whip. A greasy, bright, dilated whip that easily startled a girl into consciousness, her emerald orbs snapped wide open by the call of the air and the intensity surrounding her. No much as a second snore and a slump back to sleep took her over, because action shoved right into her and she shoved back, and as she rose to her tanned toes, a grassy skirt went _swish-swish_ around her hips and she yawned the most voraciously like she was about to eat the air.

Not so. "Oh my—DIGADIG!" A cough. "Digadig, what the..." She spluttered into wracking voices again. "That was hella gross, oh my gosh! Why diga-does the air here taste so... diga-disturbing? Diga-does that even make sense? Prolly not? Digadig?" A new sense of loneliness she didn't rightfully agree with settled upon her figure, which wasn't shivering despite the air around her and her crop top with hardly a strap to support its red, tropical fabrics on her tanned shoulders. The majority of her only-slightly chubby stomach protruded, and the grass skirt wasn't doing any favors, _hon_.

The female with the shamelessly, boisterously loud voice sprang out and her curls of thick, heavy pink hair came spiraling from two different twists, the yellow-highlighted bangs propped like obvious eyesores. Flicking back some of the sunny tips so that she could see better, the girl plastered her tan hands on her grass-skirted hips and began to observe her diga-drastic change in surroundings, diga-deciding without much diga-difficulty she didn't like it all that much here. "Well then, diga."

Her odd, throaty accent with the digas and the digs easily clashed with her surroundings, not even looking over her persona as it was. Cold chills began to thread through her skin like they never had before; this girl could stand snowy temperatures with no much as a minor change in outfit, and here she was, beginning a violent shake like a leaf. A sneezing leaf. The diga-droning constant of pelting rain and lighting and the diga-distant roll of thunder diga-didn't help things all that much. Just made it harder to hear herself think.

Crunchy wood crumbled under her bouncy feet, and the walls which she leaned on were no better. She was taller than the average female, which was a pride she took seriously especially when her closest friends stood much shorter—one girl wasn't even to five feet, another just barely grazed it, and, hell, the guys she was closest with all had some sadistically failing heights. From this, she had a sort of teak wood tree presence, diga-dark-colored like one, but not all willowy and pale. She had a friend that was willowy; no, scratch that, girl was too short to be willowy. Hell, none of her friends were tall enough to be willowy. She was tall enough, but not that sort of thin two of her friends were—though that was because they were, like, um, abused, so...

Speaking of abused, this place had the stench of it. Abuse. Yuck. The girl with the pink hair and the highlights diga-did not like that sort of leeching stank just casually contaminating her entire body as she stood there and smelled it. But not like she had some other choice, unless she magically stopped needing air. Wasn't happening, was it.

Yeah: no.

Angrily flicking back a tanned hand around her bangs all over again and gnawing at her lip, the girl straightened herself with a flourish of her grass-skirted hips. "Looks like this is a job for Pauleen to handle," she snorted, tacking on with—" _Digadig._ "

In a short explanation to enlighten the idiots, her strange accent was just as powerful as someone who was western _y'all_ or southern _ya durn durgin' folks_ or northern _pip-pip cheerio_ or whatever other accent pleased your fancy. _Digadig_ happened to be hers. She was a diga-digadig; what diga-did you expect. But the girl who helpfully labeled herself Pauleen had more to complain about than her race. Besides, as far as the emerald eye glimmered, not a counteracting soul was to be seen in the otherwise cold and diga-dreary halls. Just some cracked windows lined her entrance; the floors that creaked and smelled like mold; a long, diga-dense platform of diga-darkness extending as far as the eye could see after only a small step or so of light. How diga-disappointing.

How the hell was she supposed to get out of her new home with all of this diga-darkness and all that junk? Where was the exit even supposed to be? Diga-did it have any sort of plan at all, or..? Probably none. She had a feeling there would be none. Still, eying a glittery substance suspended in the air by mold, Pauleen skipped over to it and found a frigidly metal handle. With some funny stains on it that, as her hand crossed over it, appeared to be a red hand-print. Well wasn't she making some friends, scoring with the kids? Hell, she had no idea what she was talking about. Pauleen could sense a creepy entailment of loneliness and she diga-didn't think she wanted that staying for long.

One hand pressed evenly against the paper-white fabric against the top of the opening and squeezed, pulled the mucked up handle, allowing a cool breeze and the fresh scent of burning to interrupt her curious stroll. Inside of the chamber happened to be a variety of more fabrics stapled unevenly to tripods of wood, colored rather aggressively by lots of things she couldn't name. Like it was a screwy art center. Seriously, though, why were some of the boards impeccably pale and rolled out, squishy, just with enough texture to have a serious look of... oh, she diga-didn't know... a living map? No, not even that. Nothing like that. It had the texture of something that was—alive, yeah... but something else, too... Pauleen, not all the positive she wanted to figure out that little mystery after being sucked into one already involving possible kidnapping stories or maybe something more serious, or maybe a messed-up diga-dream, turned to the left and started working her bare toes.

Perhaps if she'd had the diga-decency to put on shoes after that one thing, she'd have her sandals. But she diga-didn't. See... The memories gave a slow lull toward her, and Pauleen most diga-definitely could see the sense of being rudely awoken in the middle of the night, and since her idiot roommate hadn't woken up and she wasn't about to go prancing around his piles of messes in their room with a flimsy nightgown on, she'd gotten diga-dressed. Yes, these were her usual attire.

If you lived in that little room with that kid, you would've gotten diga-dressed too. He was a troll—well, not literally, but he was a troll.

And then it all fell back like a hella bunch of black nights to nothing but her abrupt memories of waking, a bunch of lousy memoirs she diga-didn't enjoy the look of. Letting out a strangled sigh, the tanned girl strutted around the art-easel-stuffed room and checked out a couple more of the diga-displayed diga-drawings and their shrewd sense of originality, as well as what the hell those easels were and why they looked so warm and flimsy and alive, as well as the choice of painting, always a red, but pink was better than red, diga-didn't everyone know that? Why had all of these shrewd things chosen red? How diga-did this place even have enough of it to go round when it reeked in the halls, too? Wait... She needed a whiff.

Creepy as it sounded, Pauleen had to check. Back with her tribe at home, they used body paint at times for diga-digadig events, and so she had a pretty diga-dominant clue on what this junk smelled like. Twirling on the spot and ditching the creepy-placed art center, Pauleen scooped some more yellow highlights out of her eyes and slammed the weakling diga-door shut to where it let out a piteous cracking pule and she... well, her nose pointed up and she sniffed. She smelled. Had to get a feel for this place, try to figure it out more. Well, she could smell, so she diga-did.

The browning nub caught more than others would. It tangled up and cast a scent over a wide area of what this entire hall was choking full of, and more, and man, did it reek. Paint smelled like berries and usually never reeked unless some wise guy used the old ones or the stink ones because they were stupid. And that was an awful lot of reeking berries—but even that held the wrong texture. This creamy assortment felt all wrong, a sort of predicament that charred her down to the marrow lazing about in her bones. A chill scraped into the girl's spine and messily cleaved at her with open fangs and hell, this place felt wrong and it felt nasty.

Whipping her hair back and forth until her cheeks, beneath the pink chalky marks, gained red bruises from the fluffiness, the girl groaned and felt like never trying that experience again. Her head ached and got a little numb in some areas, and her nose scraped with an illness. One small scent stuck to her the same, though, and it was... vaguely entertaining, because it had to diga-do with another life out there. Another person. Another being—an alive one at that, and it felt close. So close.

Having no idea whether any of her friends wound up in here, knowing for sure her roommate hadn't though her memories hadn't finished regurgitating, Pauleen sashayed onward. Her eyes, having nothing else to diga-do, boringly roamed the sea of walls that endlessly roamed with her, and she found that with her taller body and head held high, she could see that more of this specific area held concrete than wood. Like, the diga-doors... well, that one had been wood, but most of the others looked like some creepy sort of cold, smooth, block-y substance with an unsettling color of grayscale applied to it. Wait... wait... it took an uncanny amount of thinking to recall that that one was moldy and concrete, not wood. Why so much gray in a diga-doily little place like this? Seriously, that art center was creepy, but it at least pertained to some amount of children and happy junk. And red paint. Red paint... was a good sign... Well, no, it looked like red paint. Diga-didn't smell like red paint. That, Pauleen could specify. No idea what, but not red paint.

That remembrance of the jolting smell of... of alive sent the pinkette's mind reeling. She scampered on. _Taptaptap_ clomp _taptap—tap...tap..._ What was that? "Uh, who's playing tricks on me, digadig?" Her boisterous tone spoke boldly for herself and her hands sidled on her hips, but the sound of someone following her diga-died out. Ugh, of course. Tossing her head around, she found nothing much out of the sort, not even a human-looking figure, though that'd be freakin' messed up and scare the hell out of her, but... everything she'd just seen looked more concrete than wood. Hell, the _diga-door_ had turned to concrete over wood.

Oh, yeah, because it wasn't—

That spelled creepy with a capital K.

It was serious business.

Having nothing better to diga-do than actually keep going in the breath of the living, maybe find someone who could help her, she pummeled on in her pumping, tanned feet now lightly diga-dusted in bruises to prove how good she was at walking. Snorting at her own practical joke—practically failure joke—the relatively tall girl ambled onward with her toes making funny creaking noises every once in awhile and the strange amount of cold gray yawning ahead.

Well, until she found the split.

The ground below her had an oddly green tint in wood, and the windows and doors all around her, encased in concrete, still patterned all the same and even had marks like multiple people had stubbed their toes, too: only now there were two paths. One stretched left, the other forward. She supposed she could've just turned left already, as that was where the smell of a breathing organism, all that good stuff, originated, and the exciting trickle of someone—no, no! Two someones!—and their diga-deposit then intake of breath over and over again, but, see, she wasn't sure how well that would work out.

Both halls had an awful lot of what looked like bubbly snot on the floorboards, just reeking and rotting away. Nearby, a helpful note had been pasted with the gentle, slow, girly text of **This looks like the end of me. If I go in there, I'll die like Morikani did. If I go back, I'll see that ghost boy sitting guard that still holds Enigure in his hands like he's hugging an older brother. But they're both dead. Just a couple hours ago, they were both still fighting over which one should be my boyfriend, but now they're both dead, and all I can do is sit here and starve.**

Someone needed to learn how to write a happy note, oh gosh. Such a diga-downer, that one. Who wrote something like that on the walls? This place diga-didn't have something diga-dead in it! That's crazy! Snorting because she figured it out, Pauleen took a step into the goop.

 _Burrrrrrrbbbbbb...BbUUUururrrBBbbbb...TH-THAAAK!_

"EEEEKK!"

Bad idea bad idea bad idea, she slammed herself back onto the ground away and angrily shook her foot out until not a spot of green remained, for she could feel the wittering stabs in her until it was all gone. All, all, aaaall gone. Or it'd sack at her and snack at her foot and wither her sanity with some crumbling leaps and tackle her in a body of pure ice and oh gosh oh gosh diga-don't kill me her brain squealed. Her heart clenched between her teeth and for a short time it diga-did feel like her life was in her throat and she was biting it. Biting it and killing herself, almost.

For reasons she diga-dared not explain, Pauleen reluctantly put pressure on her foot and stumbled, face-first, into a concrete wall. Something that smelled arid like the not-red-paint chipped and spilled out of her mouth, leaving a lip-imprint on the gray in color, slowly oozing down. Something cracked in her mouth, and she spat, and into that green goo went a chip of a white-inflected substance, short and sharp like chalk. Her mouth throbbed.

A tooth.

Idiot.

Diga-dang; Pauleen wasn't usually this unceremoniously clumsy. The last time anything like this even threatened to happen was when she and her buddy diga-Dina... oh, right... she'd... broken diga-Dina's hand—it wasn't a pretty sight. Long story short, the pale girl couldn't write with her left hand for some time. Then again, she was illiterate. Prolly couldn't tell all that much. But it pinched a grudge into Rupert who obviously stopped pressurizing trust at her now. Tittering, the taller soul shook her head at the thought of the shorter ones she knew so well, and idly wondered if something might've happened and they were in here too. It was a weird place, but hey, you never know. She was here. Maybe they were, too. Prolly not, but, but maybe.

Wincing, limping weakly on her right foot, left tucked up by her thigh and stitched over by fronds of her grass skirt, tan hands clasped at the smooth—no, not smooth, but cracked, filled with tiny, unbalancing imperfections—wall. She had one friend who actually had physical capabilities as well—then again, he wasn't reaaally a friend, just her idiot roommate. They both had some pretty rad climbing skills and happened to diga-demonstrate them some few times. Pauleen diga-didn't use them all that much and certainly wasn't as hysterically outrageous at it like her stupid idiot roommate, but—not to brag—who kid, of course she'd brag about it—she had some skills.

Hoisting herself into the air by long, tan fingers alone, the girl contorted and twisted at her torso and below, gently restraining her legs and pulling until only her knees could support her past the palm. Tingling like it laughed mockingly, that left foot itched like fire. Pauleen swerved it through the air and scooted and pulled and plunged herself past and over the wall as fast as her limited talent allowed her to, pink puffs of hair orbiting around her steadily-reddening cheeks, puffed and rounded, emerald orbs like a bejeweled mess in her head and dang, Pauleen felt hella hot in here where the wind had been so cold just some sorta minutes ago. She only managed to cling to the wall because did she let go, she'd technically not be in... a very good place. The world she came from often had no realm of losing a life, and hell, her grandfather who watched over her was a shriveled old man whose life traced back thousands of years, perhaps tens of thousands, so she had no concerns and never faced these threats until now.

Scooting and writhing, only able to focus on her sweaty, tan—bruised, blistered—palms and what sort of maelstrom lied below diga-did she bite it, diga-die, whatever, Pauleen furiously worked at a slow pace her focused composure, forked with muscle contractions and bulges of her strength holding her up and over, couldn't see. What mattered was not biting it: what mattered was tucking her life under her tongue and not losing it, biting it, whatever... unless the circumstance called for it. Being naïve and stupid, she still had no real scale of measure to how dangerous the world could be. Stepping into the goo hella hurt, but that was nothing compared to the weight of the nexus hanging diga-down on her. She just didn't know it. Yet.

"Bwwaaaaaahhaaaahaaaaahhhhhh..." Feet dragging, the girl unceremoniously tumbled into a mess of tan skin and skimpy dress, her curls of fluffy hair sidling up by each edge of her cheeks. "Can't I just stay here forever?" she groaned to no one in particular, "digadig?" Of course, nobody responded, but that taste of life—that scent of some other human—humans—out there that could be, like, alive with her—sat just on the edges of her grip. "Five more minutes and I promise I'll—"

" _NAOMI!"_

"DIGADIG!" she shrieked, hair standing on end, "WHO THE HELL?"

" _NAOMI, STOP! STOP NOW! LOOK AT ME!"_

Some other female, for sure. Oh gosh, that diga-didn't sound happy. More like hella diga-depressed. Something felt entirely wrong with the atmosphere that began to mob her. In an act of either pure bravery or stupidity, the girl threw her pink-haired head back and in a rattle of the grass skirt, ran on full impulse and adrenaline to reach the situation, when that same, recognizable voice—a little slurred and humorous, currently iced in fear—let out a sound that suggested she was biting it. Pauleen stiffened; _biting it._ She'd never, in her entire life, felt so close to the brink of... of... of _this._ It was enough to kick her breath away and send her sprawling over the green floorboards which poked into her soft stomach.

The patterned pumping of footprints chased over her figure, and a few steps planted upon her sprawled stain of brown coloring. How... how rude. But Pauleen had no chance to think about that; what about the girl? The girl whose name she diga-didn't even know, but sounded like she was biting it? Hell... _this_ was happening. _This_ wasn't... good. Oh, hell... Prancing, her hands burst up and she pushed herself into another run, thrusting herself into an eerily cold section off on this big place where the noises took a more violent turn, and she could hear a whimpering sort of... regurgitate.

Was she puking her life or something? Was that... a thing?

Pauleen's gait slurred considerably as she wandered further into the concrete-encased chamber. That whiff of life she'd caught... it was right there. Bright... warm light... right there. _There. This. There._ The atmosphere felt like something creepy and apprehensive restlessly sat nearby... watching her; waiting for her. Why would it wait for her? Pauleen tried to swallow; her throat was diga-dry and parched. A sudden thirst overtook her. Clay-brown hands molded into fists and chattered with her cheeks. For all of the athletic craziness she'd tossed her body into, sweat and the press of physical limits that she'd had to diga-do to get over that stubborn hallway, the feeling in her all but withered away with the touch of chills that blasted down her spine. Teeth chattered and nearly barbecued the clutching groans and strangled whimpers just ahead.

The girl spoke with a name, over and over again as she suffered through what still really, really sounded like strangulation of—of her life. Yeah, that. Why would she mumble over it like that? Was it important or something..? _naaaaooomiii... naaaoooomiiiii..._ Hell, it creeped Pauleen out, but it looked like no one else had come to the scene, so she prolly had to diga-do something about this. Well, either way, a person was a person, and this place seemed like the kinda place where you wanted to be around another a lot of the time. Like all the time. She knew nothing about this _here_ but man, she wanted anything but going through it all alone.

She knew of no one else that might confront biting-it girl, so, hey, someone.

Working up her freezing nerves to get a move on, gently untwisting her bands of pink and yellow-tinged hair in the first time in forever to let it slide down all around her to her waist and provide some ample, needed warmth, Pauleen grinned a little sharply and tossed motion through her feet, gliding her hands along the box-like encasement sectioned off into five green doors on the right side of the somewhat oblong and narrow room. Some tacky-looking sinks and mirrors had been pasted in that ugly concrete to the open space to the side as well—seemed to be some sorta restroom area. Just old and creaky, like the rest of the weird place.

Her heart seized as a hand crested over the fourth wooden cusp down, leading off into the unknown depths of what the opening might hold. It shook madly and held a frenzied warmth of energy birthed into it, and Pauleen felt like she should prolly crack this sucker open, so with cold fingers stiffly tied against the metal knob, rust rubbing off and sending oily glitter onto her wrist, she tugged. Peeling open, the door obliged with a knotted _creeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaakkk_ of unjust hinges. In pooled the darkness; out billowed the scent; and within sparked a new emotion Pauleen had never felt before in her entire hella long life.

Something twitched madly. Convulsed. Struggled with words. Couldn't speak. Diga-deadened eyes full of pressurized failure squeezed with a brown pigment and spilled over in a clear fluid—oh, tears. She'd seen diga-Dina cry enough to tell. Diga-dang. This couldn't... be right...

That emotion snapped in on her throat, and with a lurch and a _screeeaaaaaaaaam,_ that brown-haired girl wildly thrashed all over again, the one name spluttering out of her lips whenever she could afford to voice it. At first, Pauleen was encased with a new, icy sensation of emotion as she stared and couldn't feel herself, penetrated by the situation, petrified out of her soul. Her tanned body felt like a shell she'd become suffocated in. And she couldn't break free as eye-contact forced her into submission with that flailing female whose own pale composure broke out in sweat and red cheeks and she held that sort of emotion, too, but it felt stronger than Pauleen's and hummed an enthralling passion all around her. She had on a long shirt and a short skirt of colors that were hard to tell by the clash of light and shadow, but the girl, Pauleen soon realized, the girl held herself suspended in the air by nothing but a mottled, torn, chewy something wrapped in her neck.

Oh hell. Holy hell.

Pauleen's height allowed her to easily jut out her arms and throw them around that girl's neck where flailing limbs couldn't reach, but then what? Petrified, mollified, stained yet again—no. She had to help this girl. That rope diga-didn't belong around her neck. No way. She had trouble breathing—hell, trouble living—and Pauleen couldn't allow something that serious to continue. Her arms furiously worked the knot and its sloppy, chewy holes and mildews and molds, as it furiously fell undone and the short girl cascaded with a loud _THUMP_ into Pauleen's tan hold. "I diga-don't know what the hell just happened, but THIS CANNOT STAND, DIGADIG!

"Oh, maybe I shouldn't be yelling." She observed how the girl quaked and ached in that sort of tone of voice, smoothing over as she leavened herself. "Hahaaaa... sorry. I'll try to be better, diga." That pale-skinned thing probably had about no idea what words were being used, but the restraint of loudness and shouting and angry vibes must've been enough to tone her down even more. Pauleen, that was a good idea. Good Pauleen. Looks like you just saved someone.

She thanked herself.

With the unrequited formalities out of the way, Pauleen's curls both hitting the girl in her arms and her own self, she awkwardly waddled with this female in her tanned protection and left the creepy chamber behind, pasting them unto a twisting corridor of spiral staircases in the expected green lighting. How hella quaint of them. Both females sat by the wall so that the corridor turning up was to their left and up and if they felt like going downstairs, straight ahead. A nice little spot to stop and try to collect themselves.

As she awaited her mystery buddy to compose but felt she'd understand well enough her own vocals, Pauleen began to chat. Ah, she liked chatting. "So, hi there! I'm Pauleeeeeeeen!" Added diga-demonstrative showing of her overused hand gestures made it more fun. "I believe I just stopped a thing from happening, digadig, so I think that's a relief. Anyway, I woke up in this funny building I guess maybe a... hummmmmmmm... diga, maybe almost an hour ago? Anyway, digadig, then I wandered around some and that rude person stepped on me and I found you and now we're here! How are you?"

"AA-aaaahhh..." Finally. A response. The girl's mellow, slurred voice picked up and started. "I'm... Seiko. Wellll, Shinohara Seiko, but I guess just Seiko. Uhhh, y-yeaaah, you just saved my liiife... which is kinda weeiiird... Well, um, for me it is. I can't believe any of that just happened. But I think it happens a lot or—I dunno. Life is hella funky, man..." She blinked distractedly, and a pale hand reached for her twin hair curls of chocolatey brown, stroking the circle her right side one's made thoughtfully.

"Oh, why do you have a weird accent?"

"What, diga?"

"Yeah, that."

"Hmm?"

"The 'diga' thingy!" She blinked and smirked beside herself. That had to be a good sign. Pauleen thanked herself again.

"Oh, that. Uh, you diga-don't get it, digadig? I'm... part of the diga-Digadig tribe..? You diga-don't know of them..? Everyone diga-does."

This Seiko buddy of hers smirked. "I think we don't live in the same sorta place. Aaahhh... d'you know what... a..." Her eyes fluttered around and locked. "Ah! A school! Wow, that's such a tacky thing to say!"

"What the hell is a school?" Pauleen jolted back, a little repulsed. The word felt funny on her tongue, and that freakin' brunette giggled back at her, the brightness in her cheeks diga-dying diga-down as she recovered some.

So she started to explain, got a little gruesomely into detail. "We learn stuff, first of all, in biiiiig buildings, like this one but... I dunno. This one's kinda repulsively huge. Hella weirdo school builders. It's an elementary school, which means that little diaper babies go here, and then there's middle school, where all the prepubescent monsters end up, and then there's high school, where fine folks like yours truly have to learn more stuff and then are shipped off into the world. Of course, I've been skipping."

"You can diga-do that?" Her new buddy stared, perplexed and a little concerned.

Seiko just shrugged, and her slightly-jazzy giggle went on. "Well, kinda. I can't remember going, so I proooolly haven't in a long time. That's... kinda weird, but maybe I'm just hallucinating, I dunno."

Pauleen's emerald eyes glowed like stained glass. "Hallucinating." That diga-didn't sound all that good.

"Haaaa-haaaaaa!" The short girl excitedly balled up her legs and wrapped her arms around them in what Pauleen recognized as a _yellow_ long shirt and a _blue_ short skirt. Colors were united. As well, the girl had a funny cape thing around her neck to her back which was blue too. Well, the medallion thingy connecting it wasn't blue: yellow again. Some sorta coordination. Did schools require healthy fashion? "Maybe I am! Cuuuz, then Naomi'd be skipping too, but Naomi doesn't skip..." Those frenzied orbs, like coffee, got a little stronger. "OOOOoooohhhhhhh! And class rep, too! Haaah, I can't see Ayumi skippin'. Or Mayu. But then again her family was all like bwaaaah—again, skipping, something, insert a freaking explanation, I dunno. We've been all having a hell of a time here, that's for su—ohhhhhh. Ohhhhh, Miss Yui... she wouldn't skiiiippp... she's a teaacheeerrr... But she's our buuudddyyyy..."

Pauleen was effectively reminded of her own buddies and wondered how they were doing. Prolly still asleep and snoring. Somewhere... Somewhere far away from her...

The thought cannon-balled right at her: diga-Dina. Where—where was she? It scared her, to think of her like that... but Pauleen hated the thought immediately, but diga-Dina couldn't be in the school right now. Oh, hell, no, don't tell her diga-Dina's in the school right now. That'd be diga-depressing. She, of all people, diga-didn't diga-deserve to go spelunking around in this diga-dangerous place. Not diga-Dina, not diga-Dina.

Farther along the stretch of momentum, not close enough to be diga-Dina, but close as well to some diga-degree, a pair of tired females stumbled along the floorboards, worn out and particularly done. One had scrapes and bruises cutting up in every angle possible, her pink attire worn to the bone with how sore and hungry and simply done she was, and the other trudged blindly over pockmarked grounds and floors, yawning into the open air with one hand on her friend's shoulder, the other weakly clutching a wax cylinder boiling flame and dripping white teardrops as they moved.

"I'm... so... tired..." Rosie parted her mouth into a yawn and tripped herself, nearly taking two souls with one stone, until her partner clenched her shoulder tightly and sent her pink friend jolting back up again. Somehow, they were standing, which was still a scary sight, with both covered head to toe in muck, dust, and the assorted sebum of the school. Ayumi's shirt and skirt were stained beyond repair, appearing more a pinkish texture than anything else with the grayscale and clotted red blood mixing. They'd both earned the nickname pinky.

The, well, blunette, if one squinted, pointedly yawned louder. "I'm tired too," she softly complained. They both complained; neither lacked the skill to mention for all to hear just how disgusting and crusted and altogether tired the duo happened to be. Although not a soul seemed to stir about it. There was a chance nobody heard them; the two girls with their hair in similar twin-tailed ties thought otherwise. Ghosts loitered this place like stuffed vivosaurs in Rosie's room—she thought back a little sadly at the remembrance of the pink chamber that she lived in.

She had an awful lot of pictures of Dino cut out from the newspaper in there. A choice few framed that included her. Most hidden in some drawers for the occasion he actually does come over to her house and he won't, well, have to see those. That'd be kinda creepy. All precautions would be great. Her mind wandered easily as she was encased in dust and red splotches and she moved almost robotic with stiff joints and others of the sort. It hurt every time she sucked in a breath; it was another thing to breathe out, like her life was being billowed, free by her lips every single time and her heart began to trend over itself in an attempt to get her to stop thinking about it. Then she'd think about her aching heart and she'd sigh.

Stumbling along behind her in a less-fit shape, thus clinging onto the albeit steady female in front of her, Ayumi listlessly would stare down at the heated wax sticking to her furled fingers in a struggle to use her mind and come up with something. Her brain felt like a kindergartener's school project: mushy with the amount of glue and strange oddities added onto it. Focus on moving and breathing became a task that absorbed to the limits of all her energy. She could barely do it; and it hurt to. Somewhere pinned onto her dusty front was a slit of paper that had resulted in she and her friend's shared burden of the mustiness, but a worth that became her beacon. Her reason.

Focus ran like a less clogged river when that part was added, how she'd almost lost it and what had to happen to keep it. Seeing the organs in the ceiling jutting out like teeth. Feeling open air move past her as an iceberg of a kid felt her fingers pluck through his transparent chest and take back what was rightfully hers. And of course running away from him. Feeling darkness permeate. Having to trust Rosie and Rosie alone to get her out of that hell under the stairs. All worth it: without this paper scrap...

It was very important. She knew this. She knew this well. Revolving to and fro around the cluster of gooey emotions she doubted were swatches of her own—vaguely recalling about her spiritual influence and its hollow upbringing—were memories. Stems of memories resulting in the flowering of a crack in her mind, where logic ceased to be. It seemed to've taken her over and rooted her system a long time ago. It was too easy to slip into the memoirs of countless excavations in the swirling nexus, about her friends and their deaths, about ditzy, flimsy puzzles involving items cast around the school and perhaps the most nascent victims, about her own loss of life. Many times. She wasn't exactly free from the bloody fingerprints allotting upon her soul.

When did they end? No idea. She irritably blinked at her own question. Maybe never. Hadn't ended in a long time. So Ayumi felt, for sure, because many things in this place overlapped, that Rosie was... a new piece to the puzzle. The last piece? No _idea—goddammit!_ Her fingernails dug into warm flesh and someone cried out gently like they were too tired to put in any emphasis—much, much too tired. Ayumi's eyes stared dully out to the hallway and she snorted.

"Ayuu?" called the one she'd squeezed, obviously slightly pissed. Probably didn't like that thing. When Rosie's tired, old, magenta irises aligned with her friend's side, she instead saw, for a flicker of a moment, something... gleaming. No, not gleaming, glowing? Glowing—more glowing, not gleaming at all, producing its own light that demanded her attention. She couldn't really tell what, and her head felt fuzzy to top it all off, so whatever she did see wasn't reliable, but it... felt weird. Yeah, that was all she had. Felt weird. Snickering beside herself for the incompetence, Rosie sauntered—tried to—on. The holes carved into her shoulder drew blood as she wrenched it in motion. Hard to feel with the feelings crusted over her, not by the fabrics of other ghosts but just her own tired anxiety and fears and not very secret crush on Dino. Hard to feel, it was.

Stooping, she found a sudden interest in the floor and scooped out a small, thick object with a slip of something clipped onto it. "Hey look," she ambled, "I think it's a book." Rosie's bruised, not-very-pink lips cupped and blew at the thin stream of dust, pointing out her findings to her friend behind her. It was very much not the first one they'd seen: the first with a paper thingy attached to it.

"Anoooother boook?" she groaned quietly.

It was funny: both girls were known by all of their peers as loud and melodramatic females with too much emotion not necessarily felt but flung around, and here they'd come, dried up like droughts. Ironic of them. In none of Ayumi's older plights could she remember herself becoming this drained. It must've had to do with the stairs: or Rosie, this new puzzle piece to her problem. To her... curse. This school was a curse. Rosie was another puzzle piece connecting into her curse who could possibly help guide a light to its cure. Its breaking point.

Nobody else in her entire time of being here and even before that splurge had ever escaped on their own. Never. She and her friends had been the only one.

It was... it _was_ like a curse, and perhaps they could break it, if they assembled this puzzle and found the cure right. Or maybe she was mixing things up... Irritably rubbing at her face with the candle-laden hand and thus nearly burning her hair, already clawing lines of gooey white wax into her cheek, Ayumi scorned herself and reached out to pocket the book along with its dusty, oversized rainbow of friends when she stopped and her fingers, the ones that had been clasping to Rosie's shoulder, rubbed over the paper.

Not a scrap, but perfectly bent, folded, and wrapped in lamination. Like a birthday present. For... _her?_

 _Sachi is my pride and joy.  
She'd do anything for me.  
I don't think she even recognizes me anymore.  
But I still love her with all my heart._

It was... her birthda—

"AYUU, ARE YOU GONNA PUT THE BOOK AWAY OR BITE INTO MY SHOULDER! OW!"

Somehow, that snapped her directly out of the trance. Her mouth warbled with the heat of Rosie's flesh.

Shaking her head feverishly as her cheeks pulsed with color, Ayumi gripped almost angrily at the book as she peeled back the laminated card and forced her soul into it, staring down the simple, black words printing **KISARAGI ACADEMY** and **CLASSROOM 2-9** and **KISHINUMA YOSHIKI**.

Her heart stopped.

 _And Kishinuma Yoshiki._

 _Kishi...  
numa...  
Yo  
shi  
ki_

The name chilled her down to the very clutches of her heart and struck a fear like no other. Energy buzzed inside of her until she became electrified with the information chewing up inside of her. His student ID. _His student ID._ Where was—where— _where the hell was he?_ Without even thinking, she shrugged off Rosie's grip and streamed past the pink one with the paper in one hand, the lined mass of books crooked into her arm, and a candle dribbling away in the other so she began to hold fire alone. It trickled through her fingers and consumed at precious morsels of skin until the edges tied and went flaky. The orange fans of flame burned up her arm and tore holes through her already-withered shirt, easily puncturing the sleeve and setting it aflame.

Ayumi felt none of this. Her soul had come skewered betwixt the overpowering influence of a woman whose daughter's birthday was today, and she was turning seven, and the feeding of ghosts underneath her umbrella of spiritual defiance.

And the name. Always the name.

A thick, slumped shadow ran from behind her and creaked with each overlapping step, dragging metal so it went _crrraaawwwwwwwnwnwnnnnkkkkkk_ every last motion the flickering thing made. Just in front of it paced something shaking and freakishly pink, the new surge of adrenaline laying waste to her body. She tripped clumsily multiple times, trying her hardest with what was left of her to keep up with the bluenette in front, this new change in position impossible for her mind to take off of.

It became inevitable: the trailing, pink shadow was failing. _Failing._

The line of three strange spirits rang out discordantly toward a blackened dead end held on hinges and somehow kept as tidy as it could be. Walkway—covered walkway. It led out somewhere into the drizzling unknown to where three lone souls aimed for, and it became increasingly easy to tell who would make it into rain-splattered victory, and who would make their final mark as a reddened pulp of corpse just in the afterglow of what could have been another chapter to her story, but ended fatally inconclusive.

A slam of rainwater and thunder strikes strung by _hella_ curses jolted into the range of the other pair of females, each clinging to the other's hand, tan patterned over a healthy pale color. Frustratedly pulling at the bangs in her stubborn gaze, Pauleen screwed up her lip as splinters jabbed from her foot to her spine and she and her buddy Seiko ran at full-force through this whole **Second Wing** thingy while soaked because they'd gone into some other room on the first floor and the last guys in left the diga-damn windows open for some diga-dumb reason that couldn't express the annoyance both felt. Unlike Pauleen, the bundle of girl clinging to her and skylarking around so diga-dreafully cheerful looked like she'd gone amnesiac and could care less about how bone-soaked she'd come to. She hid it so well.

For now, they'd gone particularly quiet, and even Pauleen had stopped spitting the word _hell_ every five seconds, which was a new record for the last some thirty minutes of hers. What? She was ticked! That was rude of them, and the skimpy crop top and grass skirt diga-didn't really help matters! Her freakin' lines of pink hair hung like dreads now, and they made her cold. Groaning at the overly happy sight of her just-as-diga-drenched friend, seeing her impeccably clean-slate face, Pauleen's gaze diga-dug into the ground as she diga-drawled out a long groan.

"Oh, come on; I think I found something!" That voice was way too upbeat for Pauleen, whose head began to sprout into an uncomfortable headache. She groaned louder and pulled at the two hands clasped over her tanned skin, but as unsettling as it got, freakin' Seiko wouldn't budge. Weirdo. Pauleen diga-didn't give half a diga-dropping fossil if Seiko found some freaking thing. Couldn't they just go find a place to hang out and sulk s'more like when Seiko was bleating that Naomi name over and over again? But because she was in the minority, she shut up until the brunette shrugged the both into some flat, concrete—full of cracks—opening that peeled into a musty-smelling chamber emitting the tune of vocals.

Pauleen had a full minute of release where that peppy, short girl took off into the semi-diga-darkness and her emerald orbs, too tired to go polished, slumped off and she was technically free. Not like the pridefully tall girl would take off or anything; that'd be rude, like that girl who was named Naomi who hadn't made a show—was that the idiot who stepped on her earlier? Mm, maybe.

"Awww, durn it! The thing won't come loose! We'll have to, like, sit on top of the piano." A pause. "Ooooyyy! Pauleeeeeeeeen! Get ooover heeeeeeereeee!" Waggling her white hand like a flag in the gloom, Pauleen was orally herded by the curly-haired and short teen into the clutches of an oblong, black-wooden surface with a bench underneath its half-oval tabletop. What kinda desk was this? Or was it just a table or something? Diga-demonstrating, the slightly-chubbier-than-the-slightly-chubby, namely Seiko, crawled up onto the black surface and sat her bum down, kicking out her slipper-and-sock-adorned feet and resting them on the glimmering black-wood bench below. Having nothing better to do, Pauleen mirrored her, and with a sweep of the yellow-cloaked sleeve, Seiko pulled a dark fabric knitted on the edge of the table surface about them, generating enough warmth to spark the boisterous girls' moods.

They stayed silent for a moment, smiling crookedly at their find and feeling egotistically proud of themselves. After the required basking passed, the tanned diga-digadig felt it time to mention: "Uh, so..." Waited until she'd safely garnered that brunette's attention. "Seiko, who the hell is that Naomi girl, diga? I kept hearing you bleat that name, oooover and oooover and oooooooover again! Digadig, who is that? Wait—is it even a she?"

A response not really expected was provoked and Seiko's cheeks upright turned bashful, her eyes refracted to the ground in a second so split Pauleen couldn't count it. She stared, dumbfounded, at the corralled sight, a little diga-droopy-faced. "Sheeee's a girl, mmmkay..." Affirmative. That was diga-downright bashful. "'n... she means a lot to me... mmm...

Her voice only went softer. "Yeah... a whole lot... So it was scary when we ended up here, and my own best friend... got sad. She got really... sad... later on. I feel like this happens a lot here." Shadows coalesced with the skin on her face. "That we wake up together and something happens, and then we have a fight, and she puts the noose—" A cough, all the gentle, burst through, and a hand rose to stroke her throat, where a remarkably thin, dark line drew around the thickness of her entire neck. Like a little note for her to remember. "And then a lot of times, I think that's when I die.

"And..." Ever the quieter, until Pauleen's face pressed Seiko's shoulder to get as close as she could to hear every word. "I think Mayu dies a lot like that too. And it's a sad thing... And when she snaps out of it, and she saves me, I get scared and die. I don't often get much farther after that. Hell, I think maybe twice I made it to the end of the thing, and then Naomi died one time, and she wasn't the same the second. And Mayu dies a lot too; I guess we're special, because we die first. So our fates are usually really marked out, so that happens... I don't really like it, but I guess that's how it works with ol' Sachi..."

Pauleen couldn't help it. "Sachi, digadig?"

"Yep. Everyone else tends to forget stuff... well, maybe not Mayu, but she and I remember a lot cuz we die the most and it's just easier to remember the weird stuff since it happens so much. Good ol' Sachi got us stuck here..." Seiko looked so sad it put the digadig at shame that she kept burning for information, but it wasn't like she was gonna go out of her way to stop the girl from talkin'. "Well, uh, I remember wanting to kiss Naomi a lot of the time...

It just broke apart like that and Seiko's words couldn't stop moving, "and it hurt—" until they burned through her germinal friend's mind. "And it hurt a lot, bein' real close to someone and yearning to be that one who gets to be by their side forever, only for them to go and fall in love with someone else... but you stick up for them because you love them, and it hurts more than hell, more than this crummy dumpy dump, to watch them go, but you kinda have to, especially when you only make it out of here twice and the first time she wasn't even alive in the end, and you know what—Satoshi wasn't alive either that time. I must be a horrible friend, oh God... I must be a really, really horrible friend...

"But I just kept doing it because I had to, y'know? When you fall in love with someone... and it's all you want in life... somehow even more than to be with them but for their happiness to grow, for them to always be s-smiling and everything... It's just _hard, okay._ It's just real durn _hard._ And then with ol' Sachi roaming around and only you and Mayu really get it... and she hurts that you can't be with the one you love and you hurt because she can't and it's so obvious that he shares her feelings and almost always it's both of them dying and it's just really really depressing—this whole place is... really... really depressing.

Shoving herself up to stand, Seiko plucked at her emotions and spoke a little bravely for herself: "Okaaay, let's go look for Naomi and the plush cat and the tongue bag noowww—"

"I never thought it was hard, diga."

That shut her up effectively. Her butt met old wood with a slam and indented the table thing, shooting a sour note from its core.

"I diga-dunno. I've got the feels for a girl named diga-Dina, but she's like your whole Mayu thingy thing with the other guy and it's obvious they're together, digadig, but I'm just happy for them for some reason. Hmm... I guess I see love diga-different or something like that? Hell, this is a little confusing..." Emerald orbs sat fixated on some picture of a wispy black-haired guy's ugly mug on the wall with scrawled words explaining him to be some music sensation. Was his name Mozart or Lobo? "Maybe it's just not as big on my life priority list, diga. What I want from life—I diga-don't hella know, I'm guessing."

Seiko thoughtfully stared at the girl by her side and giggled softly, her mellow voice reverberating in the concrete cell. "Both'a us, then. Hmmm." Then her gaze shifted a little, like she diga-didn't care anymore.

Really, the brunette felt a smudge of guilt festering in her heart for shoving all her emotions like that into this new friend's face. That probably didn't chalk up to much help. But she did feel guilty... That prolly had to be wrong on some degree.

To her surprise—"Heey, diga-don't get all gluuum, digadiiig... You diga-don't know. She just might feel the same way. Like—like that Mayu example thingy was all about, diga. And she'll always be there for you. The two'o'ya are best friends for a reason, geesh! Have more faith in yourself. Diga!"

Even from something as minor as that, Seiko couldn't help but giggle a little. It'd sounded funny, and she felt all better after venting her emotions at this friendly ol' stranger.

On the inside, Pauleen really wasn't liking this Naomi thing though. Not her poor friend's problem—the person. For being a butt to this mellow-voiced and somewhat try-hard female who was freakin' suffering about all of this and some blind and diga-deaf idiot couldn't even tell that she was hurting Seiko. Pauleen personally had had experiences with the blind and diga-deaf—one of diga-Dina's vivosaurs—and that thing knew way more than everyone else practically, but she also couldn't really see the hurt on diga-Dina's face every time she listed an insult and it made Pauleen want to punch that stupid vivosaur. Couldn't even remember her name, but she wanted to punch her.

And thus, Naomi began to craft the look of a sinister monster inside the pinkette's mind. The two idly sat and laughed softly about sweet nothings, eventually cozy and diga-dry enough to feel ready to strut back out through the concrete hallways of this whole second wing part of this school Seiko was blabbing over, one pair of coffee brown eyes searching for a familiar face, the parallel green with duller sight and a strengthened hearing, listening for the diga-dull thumps that began to resemble footsteps. The girl to her side who kept mindlessly chattering diga-didn't catch them, but as they began to toll into a pattern, Pauleen could easily steer her away from the incoming sound and even lock them into chambers when it came all too close, having them creepily observe the exhibits in that art center—art classroom for school, said Seiko—and even pocket a couple of the sculptures on the wall because they might need it, y'know, and another time slinking into the boys' bathroom because Seiko was very convinced using the girls' would be a bad idea.

Well, of course it would; she'd nearly diga-died there... apparently a few times. The word still wasn't very strong at registering in Pauleen's mindful sonar, but she got enough of a gist. Diga-death resulted from bad things like what almost happened to the painfully upbeat brunette peeping around by her side. Biting it.

Those hella loud footsteps began to diga-dance into the tall, tanned girl's mind until it took over in a senseless cacophony spinning her aside and nearly sending her into that room with the open windows and the insurmountable diga-downpour until a tittering Seiko plowed her away like a profound teacher. Or, what she'd diga-described as a teacher. About half of some Yui person's life? Diga-didn't know a Yui, but Seiko diga-did.

At some point, the wild noises in her head took them both to that bottom floor again, standing in the moist warmth of those shoe locker things Seiko pointed out and a thick, heavy door that would lead somewhere that had nothing to diga-do with the second wing. The first wing, right? A pair of tiny corpses stank from around the bend of the wooden holding spaces, and an arm or two of pale composure swung out of a couple compartments, but the majority of this entire place looked all clear.

Pauleen had never seen a diga-dead body until Seiko whispered about it and tried to pull her buddy away—but the emerald eyes found them, and it... it was, well, weird. Yeah, that was it. Weird. Just... weird.

 _Thong, thong, thong, thong..._

Like clockwork, the footsteps spoke as no other words could. Pauleen lost her breath. She seized the pale hand beside hers and attempted to shrug her new buddy away from any openings, near the shelter of those wooden wall-like lockers just stacked to the side; Seiko wouldn't budge and insisted they started searching the first wing already. It had more bad memories than the second wing: it may hold Naomi, and that was all that girl cared about. Naomi, Naomi, Naomi—diga-drove Pauleen insane.

 _THONG, THONG, THONG THONG THONG THONG._

They burned holes as nothing else could straight through her soul. Her mind, no other way to fight, began to screech GO AWAY, GO AWAY, GO AWAY! It obliged in no way at all of course. Noises couldn't listen; Pauleen felt like she was going insane. And it wouldn't go away. No matter what, the feeling couldn't go away, it stuck and stayed and pulled at her, pulled her far away from her body and tore her mind in two.

 _THONG_

 _THONG THONG_

 _THONG_

 _THONG_

 _THONG_

"STOPPIT!" Her mindless squirming took form and tugged fiercely at the person grabbing at her in some meaningless attempt to get her to listen when Pauleen was the one acting without sense. In an act of desperation, Seiko plucked out her sharp-edged sculpture and smashed it into the wall.

 _SCRHAHAHCHCHHHH._

It worked for about half a second.

 _THONG THONG THONGTHONGTHONGTHONGTHONG—_

"MAKE IT GO AWAY!" Pauleen wailed, "MAKE IT STOP!"

In her physical form, she jerked unconditionally and swatted at anything near her. In her thick head, the footsteps reigned like clockwork and ticked, ticked, ticked until the limit would overflow and Naomi would show up and there was nothing she could do. A split of either pure epiphany or insanity wrought back the reminder of clockwork and fleshed it in with her life. With her life purpose.

Everyone had a life purpose, see. And for some reason, now was the time this brought back up in her mind and rang with a true clarity she'd never felt before. Perhaps some people had a single need in life and that was love, that was their one thing, and that was what Seiko felt, and perhaps others wanted money or power or wisdom, or the ability to help others, or maybe they tore their life up into nothing but mindless hollow and lost it all to their own idiocy.

And maybe others diga-didn't know yet; like Pauleen. Or maybe hers was family. She freakin' loved her grandpa to bits—either way, hers had nothing to diga-do with being with diga-Dina. She felt satisfied as long as that one random girl was all good and fit. She'd protect her if something happened, but her love wasn't forcing her into some yearning like Seiko... or anything like that with the whole monster girl Naomi thingy.

Like clockwork, the footsteps rang.

Maybe her... and Mayu, and that other boy, and Naomi, and a lot of other things were connected.

 _THONG._

Maybe it was something way, way bigger.

 _THONG._

There.

Like a diga-death toll.

Crying out and regaining her senses in no more time than she could spare, Pauleen immediately lashed out and grabbed Seiko, diga-dragging the two of them through a green-lanced hallway and thrust down a right, where, when her head turned back, she caught diga-dark orbs and short, brown hair. The name. Naomi. That had to be Naomi. Her uniform clothing: yellow shirt, blue skirt. They matched, down to their little clip of an ID. But Naomi's had no funny scrap in it like Seiko's did, she noticed blindly. Thumbing through the strap in her grass skirt, Pauleen emerged her sharp tool of a clay piece and lobbed it back, where the bits exploded like a watermelon and left only a miniature strip of paper inside standing, where the diga-dark orbs fell and the girl almost looked... unhinged.

Creepy for sure.

Almost to the stairs. They could hide somewhere. Just in front of them diga-danced a thick, green landing, when she caught tracks of red steering messily over the floor. Pulling Seiko upward with her—the girl diga-didn't seem to notice much—Pauleen's newly-sane form followed curiously to the top of the everlasting staircase which had swooned longer than she thought, and ceased to bend in the middle, instead climbing higher, and higher, and higher.

Wait... "Seiko, stay here, diga." She gestured at the ground. The light far up above clicked and seemed reachable as the short and slightly-stout brunette waited, her curls bouncing with either adrenaline or fear. Prolly fear. A hella huge gang of fear.

As she hastily clambered and followed the red liquid trail, something even larger, redder, and hazier bloomed to her sight, and she caught up with huffing breaths. Something... had been diga-dragged over here for her to see. Quickly, Pauleen tossed back her final collected sculptures for Seiko, feeling like she might wanna leave them.

The sight came into view and she caught the gash of a mess, and why everything looked so red. What had originally been blue now dyed red: a chunky, red, pulpy mess of scales that had once been blue and were supposed to... supposed to be _blue_.

Not knowing what to do, once again plunging into the bathypelagic loss of life and breathing in a dark, strenuous substance that balled up within her, Pauleen whimpered: _Tri...kko?_

Dina.

Dina had a Trikko.

 _TRIKKO!_ No response. _WH-WHAT THE HELL! TRIKKO!_ Nothing at all. Nope. Nada. Response result totaled to zilch.

Wilting on the spot, tan skin and skimpy diga-dress met red pulp as it diga-dribbled upon her. Something gently yanked her by the neck. She couldn't tell what. Maybe Naomi would kill her now.

Words pierced her mind, and she screamed the one thing she could think of.

" _AAAAAAAAHAAHAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH...  
"DIGAA-DIIIIIINAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"_

She was mirrored by another.

" _HELP ME  
"SAVE ME_

"PLEASE...  
N-nn-nnnNNOOOOO!"

Not a malevolent spirit raised suspicions.

" _DIGA-DIIIIIIINNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"_

 **:3  
D'you know who those that last screamer is, perchance? Eheh, I promise I gave enough context that you can figure it ouuuuut... x3 **

**Oh, fun teaser, this is exactly what Satoshi heard, all of you who remember him from chapter three!**

 **Dino: OooH OOH I KNOW!**

 **Me: -lets him answer, knowing he'll get it wrong-**

 **Dino: It's-**

 **Me: -PRESSES DOWN HARD ON SPOILER BUTTON BECAUSE HE ACTUALLY GOT IT-**

 **Dino: ewe geez.**

 **Me: No one else can know! ;w;**

 **Dino: Haha, weirdo.**

 **Me: Thank you for another chapter of CPBBBB! ;3**


	11. V: He was Led Astray

**Pauleen: Uughhhhh... what just happened, digadig?**

 **Me: ewe I can't really spoil... but then again, we don't see you again... Welp, you get the idea. Stuff happened.**

 **Pauleen: DIGA-DARNIT I WANNA BE IN THE STORY**

 **Dino: THANK YOU FOR UNDERSTANDING ME**

 **Pauleen: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?**

 **Dino: SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS YOU!**

 **Pauleen: -scrunches up face at him like he's a corpse- Ew.**

 **Dino: TTwTT**

 **Me: Here it iiis! -ignoring my characters- The final arc! ^^ Five more chapters and the story is over... wow, this was kinda fast...**

Corpse Party: Broken Bones: Bloody Bonds V

Chapter Eleven: He was Led Astray

Hallways painted out from all sides like claws closing in, their dysfunctional, discombobulated strikes of brown and slashing red terrifying the poor little girl beyond measure as she fled from slash to slash of space, her face bleeding of color and fear clutching her by the throat, holding her just from stepping out of line. Everywhere she turned another monster waited. Every time she stopped it would breathe down her neck and make her cry and feel like—like the school was gonna kill her too. Cuz it killed Torn and it killed Trikko and she was next, wasn't she?

The scary creature framed in red had given her a haughty stare when it saw her. But she couldn't help it; that thing had just strangled and swabbed her only hope into pulpy messes: she couldn't live on with that in her head, there was no way. She was gonna keep wailing and waddling around until, eventually, the heart was bled out of her and she had nothing left to hold onto but death choking at her, and she'd be just like them.

Big brother, she wailed evermore: Big brother, save me. Where are you, my big, strong, sweet big brother? Why haven't you saved me? Why aren't you here for me?

Clogged wetness in her eyes stayed jammed in there like forbidden secrets that couldn't come undone, wouldn't sweep clean, and if they fell out, would entwine with the various bruises and clippings of blood—of memories—dyed to her skin from multiple monsters. So many dead bodies reeked the slashes of hallways it'd become really hard to walk without stepping in something, and that something making a little _squirrsh_ right back, and it sickened her and Yuka was scared, so scared, so scared dreadfully out of her mind.

Stuck. Useless. Empty. Big brother, save me: all that was in her, but this wasn't a fairy tale where her prince came to her rescue: this was Heavenly Host. The princess of the kingdom scared her out of her wits and wouldn't leave her hanging until she died. Because she wanted them to die; she really, really wanted them all to die.

The creature thing had nothing to do with the princess of Heavenly Host—she could tell that much. Both of those entities sure felt scary... but they didn't have much correlation. They both happened to stop lives for sure. They... didn't relate, though. Not... not quite. Didn't quite touch. They had as much in common as Kizami did with big brother, practically.

Something stuck to little Yuka's throat and the pale, ghost-like girl found it censurable to swallow. Tears, maybe? That whole line had gone clogged and cold and numb in her; maybe tears. Maybe not. She couldn't tell very much. Just mindless wandering and pleading for a big brother that wouldn't save her, she knew that. Yuka had to be strong to find him! But—but it was so hard to find him, he didn't seem to be anywhere!

Such a brat. The girl with her own little crown of a pink plastic headband adorably placating her short cut of brown hairs with the touch of violet. The touch of violet that reminded her of Torn and how vividly she saw a face in his head that had violet eyes, the face of someone important. Maybe that matched up with the creature thing; but the eyes felt so full of crusty, coalescing red like an encasement trapping it to its body and its deeds. Many deeds.

She was an idiot compared to big brother: yet... she could tell that monster was responsible for all of the newly-dead corpses lingering in every space imaginable, and then some. It'd looked like it'd ran out of victims at some point, resorting to stuffing old, decaying, impeccably smelly skeletons and decomposing racks of flesh into the walls and ceilings, having run out of that much space. Why did this thing hate Yuka so much? Big brother—where are you?

That was all she thought about. Big brother; big brother; big brother.

Her other big brothers and sisters were important too, but, but: big brother! Yuka couldn't explain it... she had to find big brother; and at the same time, life felt so futile in her tiny, frigid-feeling fingers. Fruitless. Filthy—dead, no, dead. Lost.

It hurt... it hurt so much...

She wanted to go back to Torn's corpse and ask him if he was truly dead. The fortysomethinglong body of his still sat there on the stairs, and so did Trikko's—right—and she wanted to beg them to stop acting so lousy and foolish and get up and help her—but they couldn't. She struggled with the notion, wanted it gone. Wanted this entire scheme to be free from her hands and left alone, so she wouldn't have to deal with it. Vainly, a fist furled and launched from her side into a random door's paper-lined window, sending a splintered _crack!_ down the lines like a firework. Her heart stopped for a pure second before funneling into life again, and it would've taken all her control to keep herself from attacking the window again.

But she didn't even try. _Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack_! Miniscule punctures that let the world know how she felt on the inside. Her gelid touches of fingers shook rampantly and the headband sitting a fragile piece of broken glass on her porcelain head threatened to fall multiple times. It didn't, by all means, it didn't. Yuka felt insane like Mr. Kizami, only she could recall who he was and how much scariness he produced, and why she felt insane and that she actually had control of herself to varying degrees and no, Yuka wasn't actually insane, but she wished she was.

Then the pain would be less severe. The overpowering, eating sense of pain chewing straight through her and leaving holey bits of her flesh and bone behind. On the inside. On the outside stayed her bloodied mass of fluids having nothing to do with her own. The parchment skin of hers was written in red ink, but she didn't own any of it, no holes punctured into her. Gritting her teeth and feeling her wrath begin to bubble—her powerlessness to her situation obvious—Yuka stumbled, halted and tried to catch herself, and busted her jaw on the hole she'd indented herself. Squealing as something mushy made a noise, her mouth erupted in red gush that she launched back and spewed over a wooden wall, her cold body shaking, shaking, shaking.

So tiny. So weak. So gullible; so easy—so easy to make her think that she had nothing she could do and death sat right in front of her. So easy to make her believe anything she wanted to. The things that go bump in the night startled her and blinded her to any sense within. Yuka could have been but a pawn without realization, not even when the fingers of the player crushed down on her porcelain figure with frigid hands and plotted her somewhere else. She sat there in a clumped, messy pile on one of the cushions of corpses as there was nowhere else to sit, no blank spaces, and spat. Felt crumpled even like a piece of paper gone flying into a stampede of eighth graders at school when the final bell rang.

No matter what important project-grade sheet it may have been: gone, by the unsuspecting children who shrieked and eked of joy as they wended their way into sunlight again.

At some point in the cooling air, Yuka's mind had done a somersault.

She attempted to pool her thoughts and make sense of her life.

Nope, couldn't figure it out.

Left with chaos and anarchy. Giving a sniffle-nosed sigh, the childish girl tugged somewhat anxiously at the waves of a dress clinging down to near her ankles of blue waters, adding to the effect of feeling just as hardhearted and lost as if she really was in a vortex of cold blue ocean. To nothing, pretty much. A whole, icy load of nothing. Not a solution to Yuka; it only jolted more pain into the soles of her hands where clenched knuckles throbbed with paper cuts. Blood steadily oozed, and it reminded her of the lines of red gouging down the edges of her lip, leaving a scant, metallic tang reverberating inside. Her tongue felt puffy and swollen where it hunched and squeezed into the pink and wet opening her mouth provided.

Sniveling pathetically like the runt she happened to be, the girl toyed with her pink, plastic headband and led herself on with no sort of hope lighting her path. Lack of attention caused little _squirts_ of fluid from the carpet of bodies below to leave stray marks into her socks, recalling those yellow slippers somewhere deemed far behind her now. It was almost a lucky coincidence she could stumble over the red fortysomethinglong corpse of Torn the dimetro all over again. Almost as if under a trance, she sauntered closer to the massive, lenient structure plastered in the bend of the staircase that provided the single passage to the bathrooms.

Yuka left her back wide open for target as she plopped to the ground in a squeeze and poked at red. The scales began to resemble red mirrors of impossible fragmentation stabbed all across his body and covering every surface cleanly that his thick skin fledged into a sail from head to tail didn't. It mostly saturated the entire line of a red back in a warm, red coating casually zigzagged in shadier hues, glossy with a lighter coat, and his face, covered with stains of sloppy liquid—the big, yellow eye majorly—and dug her tiny shovels of fingers into the goo. _Slopch, slopchhh, sloooopppppshhchhhhhhhh..._ Tenderly, curled appendages squeezed at the uncovered sight. _Squuoootch... Squotch; squotch; squotch. SPLAT!_ It ran thick and tepid down her arm, causing a shiver of warmth to fill her body.

A shrill squeal evaporated off of her tongue drily. She licked at her lips, warm-icy blue eyes absorbed on the task ahead as morsels of gooey, tethered flesh began to patch apart and show off little glimpses of the presence inside. Yuka slowly, methodically, placed her left hand onto the thick jawline of the vivosaur and gently pressed her thumb's weight into bone. Not a move, not a crack. A little angrily, she punctured her nail through soft skin and dug a tiny hole in there.

So imbibed with her current task, she didn't notice the crawling line of drool gently curving down her hatched-open mouth, glassy eyes staring without seeing as she drew herself in.

So unnoticed to the outer world, not a shell of the others with her took the silhouette in account. So creepily poised; so perfectly pruned: not a soul would gander that had been the girl so terrified she'd gone and soiled her pants every single time she woke up in Heavenly Host Elementary School. Yes. Every single time.

So still and ingesting deep, throaty breaths all the way down to her core, her ears had shut off and couldn't tell when the distant trump of footprints took the same, morbid trounce she had.

 _Splort. Splort. Splort. Splort._

Slow. Every movement coordinated, as if it didn't have control, or perhaps just as absorbed as she with its task at hand.

 _Splort. Splort. Splort. Splort._

So imbibed with their current tasks, they didn't notice the link that had closed betwixt them, and she didn't register the clamp on the nape of her neck in acidly cold touch; it not the spring of warmth in its mitt of a hand. Having entered alone but entwined furthermore to the point of the present, the larger figure dragged the smaller in bathypelagic steps almost gliding over deep, squishy corpses that let out an inkling of sound with each pressurized point formed into it. Not a word emanated from the black thing or the dragged child as they moved along in slow, methodical reason, and she was taken to where she had to go.

A cracked, arid wind ran peacefully through the set terrain, one the overworked being in place hadn't felt for some time: actual air didn't exactly come often here. Down sets of stairs and up a final piece, planted into a space with a haunting, dazed-red texture below, the figure set to motion and sprawled up such landing, slow and meaningful and staring in amazement at how much flooring had been repaired. Last time he'd been up and running, this whole goddamned section had fallen to unholy pieces, but by now it looked particularly fresh, cutting-edge—as new as this sadistic hole got, even. Shifty blue eyes observed the area and sunkissed hands folded into black pants pockets, a blonde head surveying the area.

"Damn," he murmured, "how do they do it?"

Of course, by now, Kishinuma Yoshiki had a pretty damn good idea how they got this place so clean in such a short amount of time and how that worked, with the spaces moving and the earthquakes chiming, which now he had concrete evidence one had happened while he'd gotten his brain kicked senseless from both a sighting of someone dear to him and, well, actually getting kicked senseless via his supposed friend. As well as that whole scene with the seismo and death. He couldn't even remember the pipsqueak's name—Ayumi would. She was like that. Her boyfriend, however: not so much.

At some point, either way, those pointed, knee-length—hell, _cowboy—_ boots had sent him sprawling and knocked the stars out of his sky. Which was unfortunate. He'd been trying to _save_ Joe, goddammit! Why did everyone have to think he was on the other side and give him that sideways you-must-be-a-bad-kid look? It seemed cool and refreshing sometimes, especially with the distance, but when people always close you off and push you away...

He hated it.

No other word matched the loathing nocked like an arrow in his quiver of a throat. He was damn pissed about that last part. Even Joe had done away with him in the end. He had... well, okay, eight people—kind of a goddamned doozy, he knew, shut the hell up—but... there wasn't eight people in the world. Eight billion, more like it.

Still, eight was all he needed—

until they all went missing and your only hope was a cowboy and a shrunken dinosaur. And the dinosaur goes insane and kills himself and the cowboy stops you from saving his life and sends you to sleep. Yoshiki was starting to gain an unhealthy dislike for cowboys. Not so much dinosaurs; he couldn't yolk a grudge over a cracked egg like the pipsqueak, that was both tasteless and rude—which he only knew because, yeah, Ayumi drilled it in. And Shige-nii with the cute nickname they all used wanted him to stop being such an ass sometimes. He couldn't help it if he was an ass, okay. He was Yoshiki: not Shige-nii, not Ayumi. He didn't have creepy occult stuff or a cute nickname, via his cute friend Mayu, rallying him on.

Just a really pockmarked sense of humor. And a really pockmarked sense of dignity. And literally every new face searched his and found him either illegal or scary or something along those stubborn lines.

Angrily shaking specks of gently-spiked blonde hair, the boy moved up a final red step with a _crack_ and went up the length of the hallway, stopping to the first hitch on his right, spilling out on hinges to creak and insert the opening to the good ol' goddamned infirmary. He had a feeling about this dump, and for once, it was a good feeling.

Casually stepping in, he suddenly tripped over the crunch of what felt like a hand and heard a gentle squeak as what sounded like a feminine retort losing consciousness. Oh hell, what did he do this time. Eyes rotating on heavy surveillance over the cots and the shelves and the dust and the screens and the desk like an island in the middle of a musty, red-rusted chamber: Yoshiki found absolutely nothing. When a voice started chanting to him:

She had be _en p_ ushed on _ce m_ ore,  
more like a lurchin _g shove,_  
and _Dina tumb_ led out th _e do_ or to t _he str_ ange _infirma_ ry

Yoshiki had never before, in his entire life, heard that phrase. Or that name. That—Dina. _Dina._ It sounded cute and sweet and soft and docile— _Dina._ Something like Mayu, only gentler— _Dina._ Nothing like the kind of person he'd love. Hell. No. Funny, now that he thought of how much Ayumi didn't resemble that thing. Hell, was she ever not gentle with him. Kept yelling and stating her means and... staring a little glazed aside, he wore a dorky grin. Somewhat hilarious because Yoshiki never wore dorky grins. He avoided them like tuxedos. A guy with that kinda sweet girl probably wore tuxedos or something. He didn't know these things, goddammit. There was a _reason_ why he loved someone like Ayumi.

Confounding himself, letting out a groan, the blonde turned his head aside to catch a whiff of a pair of spirits, one little girl missing her head only half the side of her companion, a blue wisp with arms stretched out and one currently disfigured by the clamp of a pair of crusty childrens' scissors. "GAH!"

He fell back and landed on his ass. Hard.

The impact of wood connecting with skin jolted up his tailbone and grated his teeth together in one massive motion, the now-winded teenager struggling to prevent his capsized figure from hitting his back on the floor, too. Concentration—the more focus he pulled into his strength, the harder it was to move. He'd locked himself on the grit and splinters, cringing madly in place and feeling like a hotheaded fool, probably looking like one. An agonized grunt, fingers to furls and fists on belay, a pair of blue slippers regained composure and gently raised as their owner stood.

It wasn't the scene playing out in front of him that had captured his attention, but the browning, scratchy, stained pocket of a bag swinging behind the scene on one of the sharpened white bones casually sticking out of the wall. This room was messed up, dammit, very messed up. It the blonde squinted his dark orbs, he could kind of get the image of what lay in front of his prize to blur and make it hard to tell exactly what sort of cyan slog he'd be storming through. And to continue that might confuse his brain to think it had nothing to do with ghosts and creepy occult things at all. Perfect.

Enough to convince him. Somehow, his tightened fists gave a loose yank and fell apart without him noticing or feeling at it, and his gait worsened of speed as he aimed and purposefully turned himself into and through the mass.

 _SHWING!_

Not without a fight. Blinding cyan whipped around him.

Thoughts stuffed into his ears, his mouth, his eyes. Surrounded him. Overwhelming him. Pouring down into him and coating him like a second body, the skein of the situation clawing over him and leaving him both senseless and senile. Something stomped and hit with thick pressure on something else; Yoshiki couldn't even tell his feet were attacking each other. He stumbled into the wall and felt the lick of metal icing down his arm, and the background throb of other cuts, many cuts—way too many cuts. And the thoughts, words, flurried through him like a storm.

The cr _umpling,  
silvery blade _  
of th _e metal  
had inje_cted into his arm  
and left a slith _ering_ gash open,  
tearin _g past his sleev_ es with superhuman _strength an_ d completely shoo _ting ch_ unks of thick, red conglomer _ate out_ of his leaking line of red and came  
a _ga_ in,  
and _ag_ ain,  
ma _shing in and i_ n and _into the skin,  
past the muscle and sinew and fl_uid until the _white_ mark of _bone sh_ owed,  
an _d then past that as well._

Yoshiki stared incredulously, wildly, surrealistically, at his unmarked arm coated in fogs of cyan as thoughts crippled him and told him and mocked him and showed him otherwise with the disciplinary state of authority over a child, and the metal lashed into him again and he felt him and he cried out and it didn't show on his arm. It never would show on his arm. Desperately, wheezing, paining, aching, oozing with the effort, an appendage flung out and snagged at something that itched in his palm and tied over fingers and slammed through cyan fluid.

Eyes that couldn't see scrambled for evidence. A popped jaw sprung into motion and babbled for feed of what to say. What to say. How to say it. How to save this atrocity from curdling down on him.

"Ahh-ahh... ahh—YUKI! KANNO YUKI!" Dark orbs stared with a new feverish ferocity at the tiny, headless morsel, just a thin fog of circle above with nothing in it, nothing at all. No response. "Ah... GODDAMMIT, WHAT'S YOUR NAME?" Nothing again. Its movements suggested it was still cutting him open, but Yoshiki had broken free and began to dawn upon his idiocy. "...Oh. Uh." Awkward. "N-nevermind." He ducked away and jiggled the door op—

Locked.

He cursed his idiocy again. "Goddammit..." And he cursed his situation. " _Goddammit..."_ And he cursed Joe for saving him from his demise and instead putting his life on the line, that goddamned asshole of a cowboy going to jam his own foot in the door when Yoshiki already did, for him, to save him because he didn't want him to die, and now he was supposed to be saved and—"GOODAMMIT!" Tears formed in his eyes. "GODDAMN YOU, JOE!"

Yoshiki wasn't really mad at Joe. He was mad that Joe had left him here. If there was one thing this blonde bastard knew about this nexus of his he'd been crammed into for however long it'd been, you didn't wander these streets alone. And with eight other people, that should've been easy. It was... it was Pippy, Joe... this new puzzle piece to his problem. To his... curse. This school was a curse. Pippy and Joe were another puzzle piece connecting into his curse who could possibly help guide a light to its cure. Its breaking point.

Quietly, the not-so delinquent shook out his head.

It was... it _was_ like a curse, and perhaps they could break it, if they assembled this puzzle and found the cure right. So basically, now the question was where the goddamned cure was and how the hell he was supposed to break out of his new jail. A box inside of a box: the blonde in the middle. Goddammit, he wasn't that strong; he couldn't break out of this on his own. Clueless, idle, he paced and paced in front of the opening that should have pulled apart and set him free of his smaller escape. An invigorating anger burned in his powerless hands and he squeezed at the hemp bag sewn into the grasp of his fingers, and he paced.

Somewhere in a nearby realm—incredibly nearby—a pair of specimen held hands and gently wended their way through the H-shaped layout of the second floor hallway, winding down and around to a section both would rather not accommodate for. But, the male of the two inwardly, quietly sighed, now that all of their fun was over and the entire sector they could explore had gone clean, Mayu insisted they go grab some medicine she'd spied on the shelves of the infirmary earlier, when Dina was pleading with her not to enter. Well, Dina had gone missing, they now very easily recalled and fretted, and the last time they'd seen her she had been profusely bleeding after taking that fall; Mayu, taking her wounds into serious consideration, felt a need on the inside to at least stock up on bandages and rubbing alcohol or what knickknacks in the infirmary could assist in patching someone's soul alive instead of bleeding it out.

And what if they ran into the girl again? Well, Dina had gone missing, and the last time they'd seen her might match up to how she looked now. Although an abundance of action had occurred betwixt the two lovers and what happened inside of this twisted nexus, not as much time had. They had yet to search the proximity, much less the perimeters, of the school for her, and Mayu felt a burning passion in her heart that she kept mentioning about how she had to find Dina again. It... it cast an admiration upon the boy beside her to see her grow so fiery about a topic.

"I promise we won't be long, Shige-nii!" Her tattered uniform stood out like a sore spot as the brunette posed in front of her glasses-wearing dear, and the boy in question gave a small smile back. He understood that she was forcing away her fears to do this because of how desperately she wanted to help Dina, and this was a way to give that poor orange-haired girl with the wide, brown eyes and the red coat she kept so clean another chance, was she hurt. Both were loud enough to call out in the hallways and receive a message back if someone was amok; having yet to hear from that poor, tiny girl possibly meant she wasn't in a state fit to respond.

Which only further ignited Mayu's cause. She'd wiped away any and all of her fears so easily, plowing through with a clean face, determination burning an emerald fire in her eyes: the only strong sense of emotion on her. Shige-nii was a more cooler, calmer showing behind her, but he watched and protected her easily and clearly if the situation proved dire. He particularly hated the thought of entering that rickety old room where he knew the girl he felt so dearly for had lost her life so many times already—

The door creaked open upon Mayu's flourish and their faces lit up with the reflections of gore.

Someone had beaten her to it. All thoughts died on the boy's tongue as he stared at the scene painted out in front of them.

On the other end of the door, with increased proximity as the wood let out a _chink_ as if it'd randomly unlocked, Yoshiki's face lit up as he, hemp bag in hand, sauntered out of the ghost-lit scene playing in that messed up infirmary and sprinted as fast as his legs could carry him away, away, and away of that torturous hell. Whatever he'd seen there, whatever he'd had the nerve to search through: never. _Never_ again. Never again. Hell. No. Goddamn. No.

It replayed in his head like a song that wouldn't stop until it corrupted his brain cells. Quietly roaming through the halls and chambers, trying to keep afloat without leaving his hands off the opening into such chamber, and pasting the hemp bag to the door itself if he'd end up coming in, he would meander and examine and so far hadn't found the most enticing things. Just some junk like little wires and ropes and torn bits of cloth. No people. No really useful items, in his opinion. And, well, a couple corpses, but he was used to them. They blended in with the school too well for him. Only the really messed up ones or those that involved his friends honestly fazed him now.

That light show with the headless girl and the kid just outright letting her... stab her scissors like that... That was pretty messed up, he had to admit. He didn't usually catch the ghost brats in the middle of their act, and not when they re-experienced killing, either. It happened from time to time—he'd been in here with the others way too long for it not to—but... there was something with that. It reminded him of that random puzzle analogy thingy. Finding nothing of interest on the second floor and feeling way too shamelessly lazy to scrounge around up to the third, he took a turn over creaky wood paneling and filed down the stairs, planning to take an old visit in this one part he remembered pretty well.

For a time, further up the stairs and confined to the spot in a time zone on its own moving more slowly, what felt like hours of feeling and seeing the primary horror of the space only lasted moments as Mayu shrugged herself ahead, the task of saving Dina from something like this far too prominent. Not wanting to let her go unguarded even a moment, Shige-nii easily slipped into step after her. She was short on her own, and looked smaller than she actually was, even with her big heart, and comparing her to someone as tall as he only made her all the tinier. It further renovated Shige-nii's need to protect her.

He moved more slowly than usual, with the clogging thought of what lay ahead too severe to mentally hurdle over in an instant. It would take time... to see something this coincidentally close to where she... _she_ so commonly lost her life and even splayed in similar circumstances, not whole but flayed over and thoroughly pasted in the entire chamber. To see this and feel something besides incredible emotion out of it. Shige-nii once saw these catastrophes more as poetical ruse than anything else and didn't feel all the so depressed for the soul. Because he couldn't remember a time he actually had that bright little brunette by his side to charm his life again, make it... make it _whole._ They still had seven others missing from a crew he'd come so used to, but he had Mayu. He could find everyone else if he had her.

Never did he have Mayu anymore. This alone... it was hard to swallow, to accept, to believe, this truly has happened. The cute little star who brightened up his life... with all of the uncaring and unnoticed people around it _—hell... he couldn't explain it.._ He couldn't _explain it..._

Sighing softly to himself, it simply felt wrong to be away from her.

 _Plop._

Red fluid shifted from the ceiling to the floor with an unruly sucking noise and shook Shige-nii into the cold, hard nexus of his reality. He caught sight of the girl sifting though bottles of dusty liquid, even sighting a small accumulation of clean ones that she strongly ignored like she knew where they were and disproved of them heavily, and her pocketing of an amount. A roll of bandages added into the ensemble, and when Mayu turned around, the pockets of her blue and fringed skirt stuck out in a pair of bulges.

"Anything that might help..." she murmured.

Shige-nii nodded. His glasses flashed slightly over his pale nose. "Yes, of course."

Making his way gently over to her, he unearthed one of her pocket's contents and only with little hesitation transferred them over to his, she unloading a fair share from her crammed other pocket and attempting to balance the scale. Wearing larger sizes of clothing came with larger pockets, so unless one squinted they couldn't see Shige-nii's bundles of medicinal objects welled up inside. Mayu, on the other hand, still had fairly thick bulges hanging off of her skirt. He thought of asking her to assist further, but he also knew she would politely decline. Mayu wanted to do whatever she could, and she would carry her fair share of healing supplies to do so.

Taking her hand again, he led her out of the chamber. Both had pointed, green-colored gazes upon the broken floorboards below, not for any safety reasons but because the rest of the infirmary had become too malformed to bear looking at on its own.

He refused to describe what he had seen. Outright refused.

Shige-nii had a particularly strong self-discipline, at that. He would... be okay.

Still, red splotches remained like combusted stars in the back of his vision as he gently squeezed Mayu's pale, little hand entwined with his larger and similarly-shaded. She was a comfort; she was a necessity. Too many pockmarked memories rotted in his mind of the times he'd lost her... the times he'd gone insane because she had died and—when she died, it almost certainly meant he would be over. And yet here he was. Mayu and Shige-nii. Something most surely... special... must have happened.

He wasn't one to root to the superstitious side, but he saw no other way that after what totaled to hundreds of thousands if not millions of scenarios trapped in this twisted nexus, that he could not recall one where Mayu and he had both lived to see one another. She tended to die; he tended to lose his mind and see her corpse first in no recognition of it. But on the inside, somewhere... The pattern was so strong he could easily pick up and tangibly recall those terrified fits of moments without her. The idea of losing her again after this time and this true, actual recollection of what was his didn't bode well. Not again.

Silent emotion reprimanded that... as well, he'd never seen Dina before this moment in time. He couldn't be all the sure on days since nothing could readily be trusted in a space as twisted as this where he'd seen ghosts take over people he'd rather not think of—and he would have recalled meeting that orange-haired girl who reminded him of little Mayu. He hadn't even met her; she had. But she didn't know her until now, and neither he, and truly, just in her presence and the people she spoke of round her—and the remains of the person she knew from the infirmary—none of it connected.

Why was she here in the first place? What had summoned her?

Not...  
Could it be?

"Shige-nii, what are you thinking about?" The gentle, high-pitched squeak of Mayu's voice sent his sifting green orbs into her lighter emerald-esque coloring. "Your eyes always get so... playful, and you go so quiet, and it makes me want to know what's going on in there..." She turned back to the road in front of them. "Hee hee..."

Quickly Shige-nii grew thankful she wasn't looking because he could feel his face burn somewhat. Tch. Slowly raising his free hand to adjust his glasses, not because he needed to but because he didn't know what to do with the burning ball of warmth in his heart, he managed to murmur, "What you told me about that girl... Dina." His eyes narrowed beneath the overhang of blue bangs and the glass of his eye-wear. "She doesn't fit in here." Sure, the nexus was full of these sorts of anomalies—but by now Shige-nii and the others had been here long enough to comprehend the patterns of this place better. Usually by... its leader's doings.

At the time he couldn't recollect anything about the leader, only that its presence consoled the school, like the cause of fate in the world. Their world. And somehow things tended to make an overall, shadowy, rigid line of... sense. In its own illogical proportions. The ruler had obviously implanted a few rules to its own scheming in place: _Seiko always gets hanged, Mayu's life is always threatened by the ghosts, Morishige loses his mind if he finds Mayu's corpse._ There were others. Those stood the longest.

If his mind could even work back that long enough and wend down to the very inkling of the school, he just might catch glimpses of resemblance... One of his... his _friends_ , Seiko, this female with a loud and dirty mouth and curls in her playful hair that he didn't find very stylish, had been murdered in the hanging fashion. Because unlike others he could stand it if he looked at it logically, he mentioned to himself how Mayu's... death... always wrapped around the ghost children and her body...

That was a full lie.

He stopped thinking about it.  
No... couldn't take it...

Perhaps Shige-nii would chide himself for it did he not think in absolute, abominable, full-throttle loath of the subject. Truly, the bluenette couldn't stand it. His eyes grew dim beneath the shade of the glass and he sighed softly, speaking up again in his low but mostly gentle tone.

"Dina and her story casts shadows on everything we've gone through here." He paused for a moment, trying to hear himself and seek the correct wording. "All of it." No other way to say it. No other way.

"Y-yeah..."

So she recognized it as well. "I don't mean to... eheh... be... a little bit of a downer, but ever since we ended up here I've never had the chance to... to..." Her head ducked shyly. How cute... He nearly chided himself for the thought but grew slightly absorbed into how simply cute the short and bright brunette looked with her cheeks blushing of pink and a tiny beam situated on her face. And she was with him; him, of all people...

"To tell you... w-well... hee... how I feel..."

"A-ah..." True as it was... "Mayu..." He couldn't help it... His gaze flickered away and couldn't hold on any of his surroundings until as the hallway blew a sudden wind his arm yanked back and Mayu squeaked. Not one of the cute ones he'd heard when someone complimented her and she'd giggle back and out came one of her own compliments. Or when... he recalled it now... some time ago... before everything... at... at their old school... when he'd catch her looking at him and he'd look back... She'd been assigned to move out of town the next day—when had it passed? It must have passed so many times over now...

How ignorant of me, he remarked silently.

To deny and try to hide the steadily-blooming emotions deep within the grove of his heart...

But he'd found her yet...

She cried out again and in the sake of what he'd later call pure impulse and nothing else, he swooped down and took her in his arms to where her small foot twisted and the shoe popped off, the momentum she'd caught from sudden change in position forcing a glass bottle out of her pocket to roll through the indention in the ground she's merely caught her foot in.

He would have cursed himself for his thoughtlessness, but—

"Sh-shige-nii..."

The way her sweet, soft voice flickered over the nickname that she'd given him, which eventually spread like wildfire to the other seven—but Mayu, and Mayu alone, first, much earlier, back when they weren't even caught in this nexus, impossible as it seemed in time ago—the way she spoke in her gently-sloped, lilting tone and smiled in that shy way toward him, their faces so near and he could easily feel the warmth of her cheeks eradicating off of her and soaking into him, how he felt his arms wrapped tightly over her back and the other under her legs, preventing her from hitting the ground and at the same time holding her so close to him, so close their noses just barely bumped and he could feel her warming breath upon him and his to her as well, how the moment all coalesced as moonlight dappled upon a scenic view, holding it snug and warm...

Shige-nii couldn't take it for a moment longer without doing anything about it. He should move, consoled his mind, do something about it. His own idiocy had locked him in there in the first place.

He couldn't help it when his face—again, he'd later call it no less than the act of him slipping somewhere, claiming it no less with his face so palpably scarlet everyone knew otherwise—his lips just, just simply happened to graze over hers.

So locked into the embrace of the moment, nobody heard the shout below.

Trudging slowly and carelessly down the flight of stairs, tripping once or twice, Yoshiki let out a guttural growl with each hit his foot made on the wooden stains of the ground. As he descended, a storm cloud of an unexplained annoyance fell upon his shoulders. He was tired. Probably because he was tired. Then again, he'd been tired _many goddamned times_ in the school, so what made this one any different? Well, he was alone. His only way of removing his stress was squeezing the hemp bag in his hand and wrapped up to his wrist with the strings at the top. Didn't look inside it because he had a bad feeling he knew what it was.

 _Kanno Yuki._ The name of the owner sat like a lazy phrase inside of him and took up some lovely space. The blonde couldn't quite figure out why it felt so familiar, but it did, and it probably had to do with the squishy bad thing in the itchy sack fitting in his palm. Or maybe not. Hell, he didn't know. All Yoshiki really had a strong assurance of was his loneliness, and that was pretty sad, but, hell, he felt lonely. Joe had, again, gone and kicked him into the clutch of unconsciousness so that his slow ass could get caught by the black matter... looked like normal air, but darkening in comparison to the areas around it. Darkening to it. And anyway, his adult cowboy buddy had gotten taken by that at some point and it was old news that Pippy didn't make his fall of course: dead.

So the delinquent-looking kid, tired and grumpy and lonely, felt that he could say he was alone, if nothing else. Well, for now. There were a bunch of brats that would possibly come and check in on him at some point. One of them had to do with the girl with no head, that creepy goddamned thing.

Giving a modest jog, careful enough that his feet didn't enter into any serious injury as of yet but more than likely a couple of blisters, a few splinters, the usual when running around to keep your life, well, alive, living, Yoshiki held on forward and entered the classroom 4-A without any troubles breathing down his neck. Unless they were invisible and a few steps behind. Oh, hell, he'd gotten paranoid. Shaking his head brusquely, sending short, almost nonexistent spikes of blonde hair roiling, his dark orbs cut through the wooden door and in went the boy to the oblong, sanctioned area.

Blue slippers trod on dried planks softly in crunching motions. A throaty cough. "Oyy..?" he softly questioned. Nobody answered; he pretty much expected that. Now, actually getting a response would be damn scary. He just had to check though. To stumble in on anyone in particular had the chances of either surging his heart with an unrealistic warmth or cutting it open and flaying it over the walls. Just depending on the person. Or the ghost, if they happened to be dead. Or the asshole zombie, he suddenly thought. Oh, the asshole zombie! How he hated that freakishly gigantic man! Couldn't recall much about him, just that he was important and creepy. And—and... at the...

For some reason, everyone remembered the first time they'd entered Heavenly Host, and the first time Yoshiki did he was with Ayumi and he and she hadn't really been dating or anything yet. That came along later. He'd kind of sort of fallen in love with her some months before they entered the nexus in the first place and she still had a really sad thing for his best friend that he liked to rub in her face sometimes and she'd yell at him for it but they both knew no one was going anywhere.

It'd taken time for her to come around and realize all of the crap he'd done for her, all the wrong endings he may have suffered. Damn Ayumi; how he loved her.

But, well, that first time... Right. The big asshole zombie man.

The more Yoshiki thought about it, the less the memories came back to him. So... nope. Nothing. Shrugging quietly, more or less accepting the notion, he sauntered further, feeling strongly enough that nobody was going to pop out into the space and scare him shitless because he'd checked and nobody responded.

An irritable voice in the back of his head asked him if there may have been an unconscious person in the back. Or a deaf person. Or a blind person who was too scared to answer. Or a mute person—goddammit, they'd find a way... well, except for the deaf person. The deaf person couldn't hear him.

"GODDAMMIT, THERE'S NO DEAF PEOPLE IN HERE! NO ONE! NO PEOPLE AT ALL, OKAY!"

Surprisingly, still no response. The teen took this as a positive suggestion and continued down the narrow, long strip of hallway, dodging around and over the miniature tabletops of desks like stones in a river. He unsurprisingly found nothing to note at the island of an ending at the stump of the hallway, where the section pored open into pockmarked ground and sparse cabinet setting. Slowly, gently pacing, he found nothing of the sort to interest him and, taking a stop to movement, deliberated leaving already since he'd just randomly tore down the hall in here and now there was nothing to note.

When something fell through the ceiling and hit him in the head.

 _Donk!_

"GODDAMMIT!"

So easily startled it was almost hysterical.

After a moment of standing there in the exact position his shaken self had been after being assaulted by a falling object that felt like a glass bottle, Yoshiki leaned over and let the thing pillow into his hand from his blonde head.

A note was trapped inside of the glass container.

With no warning or consideration he chucked the glass madly at the wooden wall in front of him and it erupted in a mess of _CRACKKKKKK!_ Calmly, a slightly-tanned hand flickered to the ground and forked through shards of clear coloring until he could stake out the brown material upholding a small, handwritten note. He didn't look at it just yet, suddenly remembering this thing had fallen from the ceiling of all places, and looked up.

No holes. Looked very secure: strange for a place as old and as hellish as Heavenly Host. Instead, a small peg stuck out from a clasp near the tip of the flooring above and out hung another scratchy brown hemp bag. If he jumped, he could almost reach it, so without apologizing to the nearest corpse, his blue slippers squished into the cool substance and, as a stepping stool, let him grasp it.

His deep voice uttered out "Yoshizawa Ryou" a little quietly. "Maybe he's the reason I now have a bruise on my head," he grumbled throatily, having no other real response than that and tying the second, squishy receptacle onto his left hand with the first. His dominant one stretched out and dark orbs squinted to make out the message.

" 'Go to... the... reference room... for more... medicinal supplies...' Weird. Oh—wait... there's a more fainter addition... hmmm... Goddammit, my eyes shouldn't have to—wait, I think that means... 'We ran out of... places to keep them... in the infirmary'..? God, that's creepy. Why the hell do I even want to go _near_ the infirmary?" Sighing to himself, the boy crumbled the note in his hand and decided he might as well see what the heck was in the reference room. If memory stayed intact, then that third floor to the left supplied the reference room stuffed with creepy occult books. Apparently medicine too. Or medicine textbooks. Maybe medicine textbooks. Hell, he didn't know.

A distant, fleeting call, passing by the boy's space and infiltrating one extremely close to his, close enough that merging was almost, so close to inevitable, when the voice sprung out in a slow, sleep-like drone:

" _Tsuuuukaaaaaaassaaaaaaaaaaaa..."_

And again.

" _Tsuuuuukaaaasaaa..."_ Longing and need filled it, brimmed with it, giving it a thick, ringing-like manner that coated the mindful hallways thoroughly. A short, pale-skinned girl in musty clothing and a tired but warm expression, jolted.

"Shige-nii!" Mayu tugged at his arm gently, having parted from him in the suddenness of what had come upon them like a warm blanket. Her green orbs sprung with emotion and she tugged his arm a little more gently, soon arousing him. Her cheeks flushed when she recalled why his smile had grown so distant. "Shige-nii... did you hear that?" she whispered softer to him.

His darker orbs stirred, pools of murky forestry waters that opened up to her. "Hmm..?" he whispered back to her; then, "Ah..."

Because it started again. _"Tsssuuuuuuuuuuuuu...kaaaaaaaa...saaaaaaaaahh..."_

"Sh-shige-nii... wh-who is... it..?" Spluttering, Mayu's hands shivered and threatened to pull over her face breaking out in lines and shadows in a sudden fear—she had a strong set of emotions—when his, warmer and stabler, gently took hers in.

"I think it's Yui."

About half the time they called her _miss_ Yui or _sensei_. No, no: much less than half the time. Yui had become... the name itself had integrated like Shige-nii. Mayu had begun to believe that he didn't like his first name all that much. But he took a strong liking to Shige-nii... she'd asked him if she could call him Sakutaro, when they were still at school, before this mess, before now, when she finally grew the ability to confess to him and it'd turned around and he confessed back, and he did oblige, but to what agree seemed failing.

Pausing for a moment, listening to the lingering ring in her ears, Mayu gently nodded. "I think so too. More than anyone else." She blinked slowly, looking up and smiling because she couldn't help it to the boy by her side. "Umm... do you know who Tsukasa is?"

He shook his head in response. Mayu shook hers too.

Gently, placing her back on the ground and turning his head aside, glasses flashing just the slightest, Mayu followed the dear boy's sight and caught a figure dressed in pink meandering toward them without even seeing. "Yuuuii?" He pushed his voice into it to try and snag her from whatever had overcome her dizzying appearance.

An average-sized lady, she didn't hinder with making Mayu look all the shorter. Upon calling of her name and in a suitable range, purple eyes snapped and brightened, Yui's head stopping its stroll and landing upon the duo in front of her, gaining to their feet. Her pale face brightened and a cheery smile encroached upon her face. "Is that..." She wondered, silently, how Yui saw them. Did she call them like siblings? Like... like what? A guardi..an...

She resembled a guardian and had, upon numerous chanced occasions, saved one or more of the people she'd come with. That—yes, that was another rule. "Mayu!" she finally called, "...Shige-nii... you too... You both." Her voice had a rhythmic scent to it, with its slightest air of nobility. She did know her stuff. Somehow, Yui held an upbeat internal system and worked with the song of her own heart, flourishing back her chin-length stripes of brown hair and, with a wink of a purple eye, buffeting both of the two at once in a big hug.

"I've been worried... so worried..."

Mayu mumbled weakly, woozy at the thought, "We always... um, die, sooo..."

"Yes... I as well," replied miss Yui, her cheeks a somewhat flushed state.

Shige-nii took this to notice and, adjusting his glasses to try and take notice away from his own blush—just seeing another with their face flushed made him think of how cute Mayu was, which... he couldn't deny from himself any longer—went on to say, "Your deaths are noble. Quite... inspiring. We loath seeing you die, but you always have a strong foundation to your cause. It's admirable, Yui..."

Did they not all share this strange bond, it would have been found as uncomfortable and slightly creepy that the tall, black-donned bluenette so casually called whom had been his teacher some decades upon decades upon—upon—a century, perhaps, by her name. Her real name. But they did. So no one took a notice. Nodding to herself, smiling kinda giddily to see Shige-nii's face get all cute and blushed, Mayu simply nodded with an mm-hmm to the others.

"Who were you calling out to..?" Shige-nii asked it softly, casually, watching his once-teacher's face pale at the wording.

She shook her head, the panda earrings studded in her shaking with the motion. "No one all the important. Besides, I don't think they were there in the first place..." The purple orbs grew distant, and it took Yui a moment to gain her bearings, slowly raising one hand to pull out the wrinkles in her pale pink jacket on the opposite arm. "Hmm...

"We should go somewhere safe."

Having been the guinea pigs of the leader of the nexus for too long, the younger two she addressed both gave a heavy nod. As they rose to their feet, two brunettes and one with a darker blue hue, Yui silently took into notice that Shige-nii reached for the shorter girl's hand beside him and she took it readily. She wouldn't tease them about it—yet—for there did happen to be more pressing matters at hand, pressing matters that had to do with the name she'd been moaning over, and now was not the time nor place. She with the noble heart and panda-lanced jewelry had a strong sense of morality and understood when a dose of humor may be needed. Not in the current state.

Pulling ahead of the two, her navy blue skirt swishing with her clacks of high heels, Yui led on slowly, deliberately, pulling open a third notch on the left and swinging wide open the available space of classroom 1-A. Motioning the two indoors, she followed with her clacking of shoes on reluctant wood, pale face squinted in the search of traps. She'd had the sort of those. For some years in her beginning of this strange, cursed life in the domain of Heavenly Host, repetition and repetition her only guide through this mismatched life, Yui had been labeled teacher to the arid point of redundancy and the eight teenagers joining her had called her miss or sensei. Had. As well an incredible abundance of dead children had tried to murder her for just that. Being a teacher.

This nexus could change even the most basic of traits. Like how to address a teacher. Though honestly, she hadn't felt like one of those in a very long time. Her priority was to stick unto the eight other children that had fallen into this nexus with her those many years ago and keep them safe to the best of her being.

It was strange when it became palpable they didn't want her to die, too, even shoving her out of the way on occasions to take the brunt of an attack meant for _her, Shishido Yui,_ not _an innocent friend._ Friend...

Blinking back emotions, she gazed on the two sitting comfortably atop a stable desk of lined light-and-dark wood, still too closely perched in some way, some how, to be the best friends everyone had assumed they were. She smirked beside herself but said nothing for another moment. To the relief of both pale children staring a little worriedly back at her, she didn't mention what they thought she would.

"However you two actually managed to meet is a mystery to me..." Still cheery, but with a stronger sense of the nobility, upholding the attention spans of the two in front of her, sitting on elementary school desks like freelance delinquents. Adorable, dorky ones that she knew they weren't and couldn't impersonate. "But it appears I'm well and done too, thank goodness." A puff of a sigh. "Are either of you hurt in any way?"

Mayu's head rose. The golden pins holding back chocolate-colored bangs on either side shimmered, and the twisty pink hair piece pinched further above sparked as well. "I don't think so!" She offered a beam and a nod. "I almost... um, you know... things nearly happened a couple'a times, and Shige-nii started out somewhere scary, but—but somehow, we're still okay." She offered a dazzling grin with that and squeaked, "Yay!"

The boy beside her gazed on with an expression that made the adult watching over them giggle. She composed herself. "Thank goodness..." And just... trailed off there. The person she thought she saw, connected to that name—Tsukasa—still rang clear in her head, and it made her nauseous, worried: a concoction of frantic dribbling down her figure.

"What's bothering you?"

And here she thought her friend was lovestruck. He still had his Shige-nii charm, though, and must've caught her distracted look. Wiping a pale hand over a cheek, Yui sighed.

"I don—"

" _NNAAOOOOMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!"_

"A-ah!"

In a flourish of her bouncy panda necklace, Yui was out the door, the clatter of her high heels the only thing that distinguished her from the school's darkening noises and bumps in the shadows.

Both students, grasping hands, stood and attempted to make a move, when their opening made a retreat and slammed shut. Shige-nii, his arms longer, could reach the brass knob and turn it if he felt the need to, but a frigid air shivered down his spine, and he instead took Mayu's little arm and led her to the midsection of the classroom, where they sat with their spines against the wall with no holes to puncture and reveal themselves, their bodies pressed against each other and the shared warmth breathtaking on his side.

He didn't know it, but she felt just as breathless.

Peering sidelong, it took a moment, then another, but Shige-nii watched in a wave of awe cutting through his green orbs as he took in the pinprick of light that steadily evolved into a slice, the only picture cutting into the semi-darkness of the room that only cloaked tighter round them. Mayu let out a squeak until her hand not by Shige-nii's side clamped over her mouth. He took her other hand and squeezed it gently, body rigid, ready to take off with her at the slightest instant of moment.

Steadily, like a warning, the light grew, and an incredulous force blocked in his heart.

He felt like if he moved, something made out of ghastly material would kill him. He just felt it. It jolted through him.

A... truly... friend... short, brown hair, thick body—Naomi—that girl whose name had been pierced into the air—had described it before.

That first time. That first time they entered the building, she'd encountered a dark, humanoid wisp of black material that, when she saw it, suddenly, breathlessly knew if she let it get her it would kill her. This moment seized him the same, and squeezing the hand supplied to him tightly, feeling Mayu's warmth take him in like no other comfort he'd ever felt, he knew to wait out the piercing ray of white that coalesced in the classroom, and not to move from their midpoint, or the thing would catch them and he'd lose her.

And Shige-nii could not bear to lose his Mayu.

 **Me: :D Yaaay, who's happy that the chapter didn't end with someone dying?  
**

 **Rupert: -nods slowly- I'm... happy no one else has suffered through my fate.**

 **Mayu: Eheh... I guess in a way you took care of it for me. Thank you...**

 **Shige-nii: -looks away, all blushy and stuff- Yes, thank you...**

 **Me: yaaaay happy feels-  
Oh, does anyone know who Tsukasa is or have an inkling of an idea why the foo Yui would be calling out his name? :3 Just curious~  
Welp, thank you for reading on through another chapter of CPBBBB. ^^ I can't believe it, but this thing is set up to finish by around Halloween. I can't believe it's almost over! Which is kind of a good thing because writing horror makes it hard to sleep at night. owo**


	12. She was not Deserving

**Yuka: ...nnnnn... Where is big brother?**

 **Me: :3 We haven't seen him since chapter four.**

 **Yuka: ...a-aaahhhh... -collapses and begins to sob-**

 **Me: owo a-ah! No! We don't know what happened to him yet! He might be okay, please stop crying or I'll tell everyone!**

…

 **-she's still crying-  
-slowly snaps fingers because nope-**

Chapter Twelve: She was not Deserving

"Hey, awesome! You're still here, man! What's up? That's really creepy that you're still in the same place, but you're here! Yaayyyy!"

The meeting had started again, and he still sounded like he was talking to no one.

Only this time the voice responded back smoothly.

"Yessir, that I am."

"Oh my gosh, I would kill for that accent. Haha, kidding, that's creepy, who would kill someone."

Apparently he didn't know what cesspool he stood in.

"So, well, I went upstairs and I nailed in the bathrooms, and I went downstairs and I nailed in more junk, and I sealed those two metal doors so now my hands are all cold but I can safely say that I, like, did it all... But sadly, I still can't find Jkonna anywhere. And I—I mean anywhere! How does a girl as Jkonna-y as her disappear that easily? Man, she has the biggest thighs I've ever seen. Thighs that size don't disappear like that."

"Well that's just grody, pard."

"I know, right! How disappointing, maaan! I almost wanna just... I have no idea, but man, when I find Jkonna... Imma show her. Yeah I will. Oh yeah. So... so anyways, uhh... hm. I wonder where Droplet and Pippy are. I sure as heck hope they've found each other by now. Oh! I'm sure that nailing in the bathrooms and everything helped them or something! Yeah, that makes total—total sense! Totally! Gotta work! I believe! I have a dream, the best dream! And it involves—"

"Why didja block off the restrooms agin, boy?"

A pause. A mildly awkward, extremely itchy pause. A mildly awkward, extremely itchy pause that filled both males with a terrible thirst of reason and the need to exterminate this creepy and strangely crafted pause of theirs.

"Cuz you told me to."

"Oh."

They went on like that as if none of it had even happened.

Maybe it didn't.

Maybe it never existed; maybe they had forgotten.

"Pard, could you please explain in detail bout these friends'a yers? Mebbe I've seen 'em..."

"What? Uhhh, suuuuuuure... Mmmmmm... Sooo... there's... uh... three—three of them! Right! Star answer! Three! And it all started like this: so Jkonna and I were having a sleepover and Pippy and Droplet were there too when suddenly I think she was having a nightmare cuz she kicked me and I woke up and she woke up and us waking up woke up Droplet and Pippy, but not my other vivosaurs, Harei and Lone and this sad, gay one named Iggy—for some reason. I dunno. Maybe they were really tired. Or maybe they were on the floor. Yeah, I think they were.

"So then the bed ripped open and the four of us all fell through. I woke up on my own again. Man, I must've gotten to sleep twice, and neither times I saw the sun! Wow, awesome! So—oh yeah, descriptions. I woke up and found Jkonna... which is funny. Since she has some chocolate-colored skin that's a liiiiiiittle darker than my dad—well, he's not my dad but I call him my dad because reasons—I thought I wouldn't see her that easily, but she also had flaming red and orange hair. No, just flaming. Flaming-colored hair. And creepy, icy blue eyes, and this icy blue paint on her cheeks below them because I don't know, she's Jkonna. And she has freaking stripes on her face, okay.

"So I guess it wasn't that hard to find her. Then we were doing tag, then she was gone."

"Yes, but... Pippy... what about Pippy?"

Memories were fuzzy, but that name stuck out worse'n a sore toe. It meant something.

So did other names. Other names of people he hadn't seen but fretted they were here too. He fretted it more and more as people began to collect and connect in his mind, and he was almost positive that if he'd look hard enough, if he sought far enough: he'd find it out. Find them...

This place did things to people.

"Mmmmm? Oh yeah, Pippy, descriptions. Uuhh, the biggest, most adorablest thingy in the entire world. Well... almost. Yeah. Same thing. Adorablest vivosaur. Brown. Long neck. Long tail. Tiny, adorable galosh-sized paw things. Rainy-day purple eyes. No, not rainy day unless he's crying, I just wanted to make a galoshes metaphor. How's that for you?"

Suddenly the words wouldn't come. Telling this innocent, grayscale character would cast a shadow of darkness upon its innocent frame. Couldn't even imagine some place as creepy as this thing hosting monsters who _killed_ —for _fun_ —his _friends._

So instead a head shook no.

"Aww, okaaaay theeeeen...

"Whaddaya wanna do now?"

Bored, gaze touched gaze and it stayed like that for a while.

Time ticked hard, cold, snap, snap, snap, snip—like scissors fixated to his life. Sitting in a terse, unforgiving position with the warmth of the one he loved curled up beside him, which honestly... brought worth to the situation at hand. A pale hand draped to his side gently held hers, his glasses flashing from the cast of light over his green, luminescent orbs, and he watched. He watched for warning: for fear that this thing might take Mayu away.

As it only swooped in closer to his seating arrangement from each side of the classroom, cloaking in an alarming amount of brightness for one who hadn't seen this great warmth in such a long time. He and the short brunette to his side shied away from it, eyes squeezed shut and he could feel shudders increasing in strength clumping and falling off of her, running through her little body and seizing him via their connection.

He could never let go of her.

Never.

Everything she did only further strengthened it. The words uttered to allow this overflowing sense of emotion upon them had only been broached some short hours ago, but those multiplied by the years spent trapped in this hollow, hatefully-skinned prison that tackled and condemned them in a wretched cycle of never ending sin they had no chance of escaping—until this strange hope of now—only sent emotions bursting at the seams, struggling to run through and escape into the catch of light.

If there was light. At the moment there happened to be a whiteness so overpowering he felt like he'd actually come in contact with the sun again: a feat that surmounted as impossible for a long time. Shige-nii never thought that he'd be the one to finally... be in this spot.

These emotions: this vortex of pain and reason, love and hope swallowed by shadows, anger, redemption—revenge... it all came together and collided upon years and years sown into experience that hopelessly whittled him down. Until it all came to those things he knew because it'd been so long the cement had hardened into fact, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Glimpsing almost harshly at the thickening ray of light set to suck them in and capture their figures for that... thing to find, he quietly observed that he had two options.

Stay or try to find a way out.

His reason exhibited that moving would provoke noise, which would lead the light to perceive that something was inside, a prize for its claws to sink into—snap, _crack—_ through. Movement would allow its being to realize that it actually had a chance of collecting something now. As much as he hated to admit it, as much as he disliked the thought of staying holed up against the rickety, wooden wall, just sitting, waiting betwixt desks like soldiers and hoping beyond hopes their lives stood a chance—an actual chance—this time: this was all they had.

If only... No. Wishing for the past to return wouldn't help him. Nobody could resurrect time. Only she who forked them over into this pit in the first place, and she hardly counted.

Taking in the fuzzy sight of light, so open and charming and enchanting, practically pulling him in, whispering his name in the gentle caresses of hope strung through the night, just glimmering there, lying there, waiting for him, asking for him—it was hard not to believe this radiance wouldn't harm him. But... he'd never seen the light before, and the chills crooked at the edges of his bones, his body, suggested otherwise. Red eyes penetrated the back of his skull, and it felt like the ghost figure his friend had described from the infirmary had snatched down again, only on someone else.

Like a time bomb; he felt like the place he sat in was ticking, and at any moment— _booosh_ , everything lost. Everything reverted back to the start where they wake up again in the cold rooms and he loses this contact... Swerving back, narrowly missing a strangely edging, inching beam, like it was alive and planned to consume him, Shige-nii's glasses bounced and flung the lighting back from him and he watched incredulously as it leaped out—

then it fell.

His lips parted in a small surge of awe as he saw the fabrics of time and space folding in front of him, and in the flick of a wrist, the flutter in an eye, the whole landscape churned and roiled with unhealthy shadows, and the infectious light had gone. Even still, the risk and sting of failure—not failure but losing Mayu and losing life all over again—high, a heightened duty of failure that could easy require him again.

No, it... it couldn't...

please... not this time...

not this time...

In a warmth-flinging rush of waves, the light has removed itself from their position in the wooden chamber. They waited, didn't move, though: the chance of what's out there could still be waiting for them to cause some noise so that it can tap into the excess of its powers and let that light fill them, bombard them. Until it tires of this game, this childish game—so many monstrous children in the depths of despair—and footsteps hollowly ding like a bell.

 _Timp, timp...  
timp, timp...  
timp, timp...  
timp, timp...  
timp, timp...  
timp, timp...  
TOMP._

Like a school bell they all knew. Shige-nii's glasses caught a glimpse of the character stepping away from the classroom, and a gentle orange dappled over the lens. Head turning and sighting this, Mayu's bouncy green orbs penetrated the sheen. "Orange..." she murmured in her soft tone: "why orange..?" Gently shaking his head, he responded with a profound no—that he didn't know, either. It was a little irrational, but seeing the question buzz in Mayu's head made him wish he could answer it. A pale hand rose and gave a small shift to his glasses, and as the tempo of footsteps died down from its first pair of seven—seven, of all numbers—Shige-nii took a small breath and landed on his slipper-adorned feet, his tall figure gently surveying the surroundings that had noticeably dimmed.

He found it more pleasant than all that light. Not only did it have that foreboding feel; the brightness was overwhelmingly new and strange in a space like this, where the sun never shined. They had rain. A lot of rain. Thundering clouds and a never-ending storm, and lightning strikes at random flashes to keep them company and sheen their world in as much brightness as they could ever find. The sun itself—or what light of what could only be described as actual daytime—almost... frightened him.

It didn't feel normal anymore on its own.

Mirroring his emotions, much more demonstrative than him as her face crumpled in slight motions, Mayu's small arms encircled one of his and her head rested near his shoulder, as she wasn't quite tall enough to reach it. He nearly smiled at that. Something as stupid and fundamental as that. Before Heavenly Host, when they were close friends at school and... Shige-nii had the others, but he didn't know them as much as he should've... she did this. She would take his arm and they would walk together, and he doubted he'd ever get the nerve to tell her these things, but he found it adorable and particularly enjoyed the sliver of warmth that filled him with her hanging onto him like that. It caused a shadow of a grin to cast over his face, which he soon shook away. They had to exit this prison of a room an—

" _NAAOOOOOMMMIIIIIIIII!"_

Mayu squeaked. "Y-Yui, I thought she—"

Of course, none in question heard her and the esteemed lady in question didn't respond, only Shige-nii, but the call of a feminine voice sparkled with fears and glass-cuts of worry sharpened and shattered upon them. Their mission became obvious. With the assortment of medicinal supplies hoarded into their pockets—all for a greater good they each supported wholly—perhaps a sparse item or so they'd found prior loitering around as well, the two set off down the stairs. Mayu's grip adjusted to his hand, so that he could still hold onto her—he did not like the idea at all of letting her go, no matter how cold her little fingers felt—he could always try to warm them—and they could move more quickly toward whatever demise had caused that girl's sobbing screech.

No question about who worded it: Shinohara Seiko. Well, just Seiko. There was a time she'd been this Shinohara he hardly knew or understood, a time he was evidently happy to have ended but would never physically show. He... truly didn't have a strength in opening up and displaying his emotions, having his heart worn over everything else... always flowing with this love...

His eyes glazed in reverie. No, that was Mayu. That was all Mayu.

He felt the same for the others... his others—though obviously they had their moments—but he couldn't possibly flourish and purify that love and radiate it like a little sun of her own being... Mayu did that, and he adored her for it. Didn't quite amount the courage to... tell her... but she did, and he loved how she gave off that emotion to all. And the others saw it, felt it, too. Gentle, sweet Mayu... Couldn't believe it: his Mayu...

Their combined footsteps patterned down the stairs; it made him think of how the ghosts would see their imprints not alone but together, for the first time, he felt sure, it'd ever happened before. And he felt a heightened certainty that he'd spent perhaps... more than decades... decades overlapping decades of time, time spent in this atrocious nexus that sucked his life away through a black-studded straw and drained him of everything. Most of the loops lasted a single day. Not even a day. Day after day of misery, horror—no Mayu, no Mayu.

Sometimes weeks. Rarely months. Once, a year. That was a scary year, he reminisced, that was a scary year. Frightening. Horrifying, what one did to sustain their own life in times of thick and thin until hanging on to the last shard of life and desperately tossing everything at themselves in order to _live_ just a _little longer.._. Disgusting. Sickening. Torturous. That one, he'd been one of the few to live. He recalled it easily: he, and Yoshiki and Satoshi.

Their trio made a strange debut, and he wasn't sure how he felt about it. So he didn't, he cast back in a scatter of other lives, alternate universes, and focused on the warmth in his hand that he gently squeezed into Mayu's shivering body, and the longer they moved and the longer he held onto her, the warmer she felt, the stronger she became, the brighter she was. A bright little star... a happy Mayu. The short brunette clung to him tightly as he did her, and it caused another ghost grin to chase over his face, even if for only a moment. Winding, streaming down, down down, until the pockmarked streams of holes began with them and care had to be exerted or a shoe—almost indefinitely worse than a shoe—would be lost.

And there, at the edges of the clutches of the hallway, collapsed in front of a rusted thing creaking over metal hinges that let in the chill and the rain on the walkway outside, behind them: there, soaking in thick layers of yellow and blue clothing melded together in a sopping heap of girl: there, brown ringlets threatening to uncurl and face locked away by chattering fingers as her wails only grew more desperate.

There they found Seiko.

"A-aah! Seiko! Seeiikoo!" Mayu leaped out from him and almost tackled the shivering, wilted creature in a hug, filling each of them with the warmth that Shige-nii had just bestowed upon her. Not much changed about the girl, still shaking, still sobbing, sopping wet, terrified out of her bones, skin, flesh, soul. But the hands fell away so that they could see the scars gouging down her cheeks like tears—and tears—and they caught the limp mass of fingers and could assume both hands had been crushed. Broken. Limp. Only the wrists supported the mangy bits of flesh and bone. Immediately Mayu's bulges of pockets went unearthed and she procured seemingly out of nowhere, then an impossible pile of items, bandaging for the hands and alcohol to clean any wounds with. Holes ripped through the palms of her hands, and Mayu coated—gently but generously, giving Seiko a cloth to put in her mouth to press on when the pain came rushing in. She cleaned and secured wounds with bandaging, with medicine, anything to help her.

Shige-nii, feeling like a fool, glanced back and found a thick, black jacket just lying there on the wooded flooring. It looked like on him it would go down to almost his knees, and to someone just a little shorter than him, there and further. Stepping back and lifting the fabric testily, he found it had no dust on it, only a small number of tears and strange, black stains. It otherwise looked perfectly fine. He dodged back to his small huddle of friends and gently draped the fabric over sopping shoulders, softly pressing warmth into her. Seiko's melting brown orbs caught his green.

He recalled a time instantly that he'd come closer than nose-bumping Seiko. Another scene from this school. She'd been hanged; he'd found her on the ground, somehow had... chewed... or clawed through the rope..? And sighting him had barreled the girl into him, and...

He hadn't hugged someone for a long time, but he hugged Seiko then. She'd died not much later... However she'd escaped, it didn't particularly end well.

A small shudder eked through his body upon thought of it, quickly deliberating how much he didn't want to consider it. The feeling of holding someone as their body grows numb, stiff, wilts, leaves you alone inside of Heavenly Host Elementary School... In those precious final moments of her life in that space... he'd grown to understand her a lot more than he thought he would have. Shige-nii had, at first, tried to shove her away, but Seiko's grip was tougher than any he'd felt, tougher than the ghost children, almost, though of course that wasn't readily possible, and he'd been forced into the position. In moments like those did Shige-nii finally realize just how much heat his body gave off. Mayu was on average slightly colder than others, so he felt sure she enjoyed something like that...

Stabbed into the moment as brown orbs puled at him without words but feeling, but need, but a heard trod upon like muck and treated horridly. She whispered in a frantic, weak voice:

"Pauleen tried to help me, but she came back later and tried to kill me. She broke my hands and she clawed at my cheeks.  
"Then I ran away.  
"Then I learned why she was protecting me from Naomi."

The word sent chills down everyone's spines and crossed shadows. The light he had seen minutes ago caused him to wonder if it would have been better than the darkness they breathed regularly. Was it shameful they felt safer when sticking to the darkness in the hallways that cloaked them comfortably, as the black jacket did Seiko's huddled figure? Seeing her eyes, looking into, through them, understanding the pain she was going through...

She was him without Mayu. And hearing that name, as much as it jutted out at them and struck a chord, a bad chord: he had to. He couldn't leave Mayu, but he had to find Naomi... he had to save her. The sniveling brunette and the girl with that name she continued to bawl struggled as much as the glasses-adorned bluenette and the bright, little girl beside him. He couldn't leave Mayu, but someone had to stay and watch over Seiko... they couldn't leave her bundled figure—his heart throbbed and pulled at him with that thought—and they couldn't really move her anywhere, as she seemed to feel strongly about squatting in the edge of the hallway...

Hallways didn't close you in and lock a door shut, lock you inside another box. He could relate.

"Ah..." He felt himself obliging without even speaking a word. Catching a glimpse with the one he loved, his heart cried out to her: his eyes must've shown it, because hers mirrored it and she bit her lip. "Mayu, please watch over Seiko... I can't let either of you be harmed..." He wanted to stay... "I need to..." He needed to stay... "find Naomi..."

It was out. Hanging in midair from the string that was his voice: okay, he'd said it. He felt like he was missing something as his black-donned figure slowly, gingerly stood and gazed upon the two girls. One of his pocketed items not revolving around medicine happened to be, as he rummaged for it, a small slip of paper. He glanced at it and—his scrap. His paper scrap. Without this, he would easily be subjected to death. Losing it...

But keeping it never helped him either. Not like he'd lost it before; not like it was a tendency of his to live. Not at all.

Besides, he'd feel safer if these girls held onto it instead. Maybe somehow it could protect them better than it did him. All he had to do was recover Naomi—the stout girl, her hair short and choppy and that of a leaf wilting in fall, its beauty just caught before the brink of death.

The thought of death had begun to thoroughly sicken him, so, placing the paper into his dear's little hand, he tore off past them, ripped the creaking door fully open, and encountered the enchanted splattering, pitter-pattering of rain that ran ceaselessly in cold, hard fervor and filled his clothes with holes of wet. Storing his glasses into his breast pocket—perhaps they'd stay drier there—he squinted and went by more slowly, carefully on the slick teak wood, meandering as quickly and steadily as deemed possible.

As he moved, ghastly images of people, people running at a time so nearly unified it was heartbreaking to see them go: provided insight. His heart puled.

First, a tiny, pale, almost porcelain little girl, purple-hued bangs and hair flying back as she squealed and ran, her headband threatening to fall with each step as she tumbled over and slipped multiple times, blue fabric of a dress streaming all about her as her tears fell and punctured through everything they hit. Somehow, she eventually stumbled past him, and he didn't feel her pass, just saw the thin outline like a shadow of the past.

It took some thrumming seconds, like this didn't happen recently but was still very connected, a much taller body, blonde-headed, took off and streamed right next to Shige-nii, going the same way he was in his shorter body and mostly-black clothing but almost invisible, faint, like he was dying. Pure instinct took over and he shouted: "Goddammit, Yoshiki! Keep yourself together! Don't you die!"

Then that was gone, and in the same direction as the blonde tore down a female, a bluenette, like he, twin bands of hair swinging like pendulums as she took much more trepidation than the ones before her, and blue orbs burned like flames. She was just as faint as the first one, her uniform matching Seiko's and Mayu's, if the latter's hadn't become so musty and tattered. No: this one was almost absolutely destroyed. Dust and blood held it in one piece.

Just split moments after her ran hard and strong a stronger-bodied girl, her clothing easily saturated with the rainwater and her curls of brown hair falling apart around her. The wild, crazed fear in her eyes only distinguished this as one person and one time: Seiko; just now. She came the same way the first one had come and whooshed by him, feeling much more alive and strong than the others.

He could only catch strong glimpses when they came close to him, and when each soul passed by, Shige-nii almost felt as if an aura has cascaded over them, one having to do with that... jacket. As strange as that sounded... He sighed softly. Everyone, as a result of this hell, has become all the more aware of their surroundings and of how lucky they were to have one another. As well as an extended sense of imagination.

This place did things to people.

Things he didn't want to think about.

Upon reaching the nook sheltering the entrance way for the second wing of the horrendous nexus, Shige-nii's heart twitched and he felt a sudden need to stop. His pale hand hovered before the brass knob of the metal opening and, sucking in a thick breath, overpowering himself with the thoughts of who he was counting on, who he had to save, whom waited for him behind, whom he had to see again, and gently crooked it open.

A penetrating darkness rolled out and consumed him.

Until the light and heat of a body tore against him and the flash of something sharp in midair caught his green eyes. Body slammed in an unsettling fashion at the jolting metal, cold crawling and soaking up his spine, then to the rest of him, dark brown orbs cut into him and pinned him there as a dramatically-cut-and-whittled shard of clay rose up high above his head and the last thing he saw was its metal piercing where his heart beat inside of him.

Thrust down crumpled stairs and hallways until the wood bent over and turned a lumpy violet and the voices that whispered amplified, the dead much more numerous in that space than the brown-patterned other, there a brunette steadily lifted its head and glanced about tiredly, worriedly, shaking. A crisp, white shirt once neatly folded lay trashed over its body, and long, dark pants shimmered of strange, red stains. The relatively tall body, stretched thin in place, held down by clamps of rusted iron—open clamps of rusted iron—laid, dizzily blinking up at a strangely lit ceiling.

"Where..." His throat bent over and he choked on something that had been inside of him. A fluid. Yes, a fluid. Coughing in rapt tempo, throat heaving and collapsing with the sickeningly liquid sweetness that had dived inside, the boy—evident now—shook in place and gave a rasp cry. His voice wasn't working. His cheeks inflamed; why couldn't he talk all that well? That was... creepy. Trying again and failing, the boy worked his wrists and ankles, the new and frigid cut of metal gouging at his wry skin. A gentle brown orb caught sight on the side of what he was struggling with and found his arms from the midpoint down cut of cloth and ravaged. Absolutely ravaged. His wrists, thoroughly cleaned and sculpted...

His throat burned. His stomach cramped, but though he felt bubbles, nothing happened. Relief. Like water to the shores, relief docked upon him. At least he had that.

Glaring past streaming cuts and gashes and tendrils of red down his arms, lifting his head—and spine—easily removing himself from the clamps, he felt his legs from the knee down in similar state.

Which was embarrassing, because he had excessively hairy legs.

Almost thankfully, the rush of crusted red covering his legs and arms seemed to obscure any of such hair and gave the boy a light sense of security. As he struggled to move, bones sore and aching, giving little cracking noises as he moved them and forced them into submission, into motion, a pair of coppery brown orbs shone into the penetrating field of vision surrounding him that he still couldn't quite make out. Why did there appear to be so much red on the walls, red that looked vibrantly similar to the markings crusted over his limbs? Did that... happen to... deal with something... particularly important? The boy's breath hitched and all at once his voice reassembled with a yell.

"Where am I!" Still harsh, mostly raspy, but alive. His voice had magically pulled itself back together in the sight of danger, and fear froze down his spine as it trickled and cooled in his core. "This is bad! This is really _bad!"_ He didn't know how bad, but the sensation stuck him through like no other: no matter how much he pulled at it, the notion wouldn't, couldn't go away. Seemed unable to go away. As he forked over his memories and struggled to come up with a response to his new terrains, all that came the most nascent were the screams. Feminine screams. Female screams. Yells that tagged back and forth with each other like a flame, and now he could feel it in his hands. Glancing down at the oddly untouched, pale appendages, a thought provoked otherwise, and he sighed.

All he could remember last without a jumbled, misconceiving heap were those parallel cries, and even those didn't fish out much more information. Just high-pitched trills and his ears cracking and—black tabletops, beakers, the tinkling of glass on glass and sinks carved into every horizontal surface: the science lab. A door that clicked shut and left him defenseless. A boy: oh, the boy! There it was! Like a spark, emotion fumed like a flame upon the boy's flickering face that radiated with a sudden sheen of jubilation.

Then the horrors of such memories fell like a corpse into his mouth and the sticky aftertaste of death tainted him. Many memories. So many memories: fluttering back and forth in his head, Mochida Satoshi reached and assembled for only the few he currently had, that he'd just lived through, the ones still warm on the edges.

Like with the boy. The boy whose ridiculous aura made him somersault to stay away. Yes, that ridiculous boy. Did he know what malevolent spirits he'd been dealing with? Striking out on an uncannily secure limb, the brunette felt readily confident that the boy had not a clue. Not a fuzzball of a cloud of a thought to persuade him away. Silly boy.

Oh. Oh gosh. Satoshi hadn't warned him—if he didn't, then... who would? What if the boy continued to assume this was all a game—what was his name—Dino!—and _ending up killing someone as a result?_ Paranoia burned his flesh like a fire, and Satoshi's lights almost went out as the powerful emotion inside of him correlated to the muscle movements his body kept struggling to perform and somehow doing. A foot—a bare foot!—where was his shoe!—dangled just over the edge of the stinking, thick table he hadn't paid much attention to, and without his body working together like it should've safely been doing, his socked bare toes wriggled and landed on dirt.

 _Splort._

Not dirt. Not dirt. Not dirt!

Shivers seized him and Satoshi's orbs glittered and slammed back upon a mouth hooked open now spewing lava-like fluids that, as they sunk into his pale flesh, turned out to be warm and strangely, freakishly comforting. But they resulted from that gap of a mouth through darkly tan skin with a gap where the teeth should've been, a gap where the tongue was supposed to lay on its throne of muscle, and Satoshi squealed, darting back as the core of his spine slipped and slammed into the jutting, oak edge of the table he'd just been sitting on.

This happened to be the perfect time for the rest of his bodily functions to start sinking in, just as his wrists and ankles had taken their sweet time to start working again. He could feel the dripping stains of something dark and arid covering his back in patches; smell the guttural fluids digesting inside of him after the trail they took through his throat; see the stains the stains the _stains_ of bright red scored across every surface imaginable in this chamber, including the body just in front of his shaking, icy toes; taste the tang of the dead and the blood surrounding him; and hear, in the back of his ears, the throbbing of blood within, and the echo of his voice that caused the thin light hanging on its wire overhead to shake.

Satoshi couldn't stop it.

"AAHHHHHHHHHH!"

Leaping back and slipping across the table, he fell into a tangled heap on the other side of the room, a metallic clattering alerting him that he had knocked over something silver. Its conglomeration of contents swam by and before he could move his hand felt the cold red seep over him. His face, he felt, grew cold, numb, gray. "A-aaaaaahhh..." came and went a trailed sigh.

The body in front of him, he inadvertently saw through the bars below under the table, had coils of tousled pink hair and odd, yellow curls from those, like pattern, like... It was weird. Her body, harshly _THUNKED_ against the earth where it appeared she'd put up perhaps the smallest of quarrels before letting it go and losing her life, was stained with drips and drops of red, and her hands clenched forward, pinching at the air and squeezing like it was all she could do. Well, it still looked like all she could do, since this was... her...

He couldn't finish the thought. Childish tears welled up in Satoshi's eyes. He didn't know what to say. Nobody would hear him, but he felt like he deserved to tell the corpse something—anything at all. Just kept staring. The brunette's face bunched up and his coppery orbs, attaining a strange gleam, overwhelmed with streams. Bruises and blisters and bloodstains alike adorning his cheeks now had rivers of water cutting them off and erasing checkpoints within the trails of red. Holey socks a merry blue splattered on ugly scars in the dirt as a boy trembled and fought to stand again. His head inadvertently slapped sideways and caught an in-depth sighting of the rotted bucket he'd knocked over. It felt like the conglomeration was inside of him, squeezing and rotting and plucking through him. Stinking him. Tasting like... meat. Moaning softly, he slipped and slid and, hands torn into the flesh of the table in front of him, that'd held him, the boy maneuvered around the room, toward the door on the other side.

Unfortunately, he'd have to go by the girl without assistance from the table, and either move on his own of use her as a support. Use a _stiff, cold body_ as a _support._ He sickened himself. Wincing readily, arms pulled out on belay, Satoshi caught another glance at his new pair of shorts and t-shirt and winced again. His face blotted out with red. A contemptuous expression settled upon his face as he tried to pocket his emotions and force his way through. A sudden, blindingly random thought struck him: the others! Where was Yuka!

Oh no not Yuka. His tiny, adorable little sister... Desperation seized his heart and, hitting a breaking point with the thought of the others rattling in his head, Satoshi managed to release the squishy oak table and sidle up past the girl. He caught her eye—big, emerald orbs, mystifying and, in a wild sort of way, elegant—and regret surged into him. Because he felt like she'd like that more, he fell to his knees, feeling the gush of sodden dirt and the red contaminating it below, oh how he missed his full-length pants, and reaching out a frigid, pale hand, tried as gently as he could, which wasn't very gentle at all, to crease her lids over her eyes. It took a few tries, to which he whispered "ahhh" in a slightly more agitated whisper each time, but he successfully closed the girl's orbs. Didn't even know her name, couldn't recognize her school uniform—

What kind of a uniform was that, anyway? Like... a crop top of red with tiny, smaller-than-his-finger's-width straps and painted flowers upon it, a grass skirt gliding down just past her knees, no shoes... Who wore that? His home was filthy with the cold and if someone like this crazy girl went and walked around with that kind of gaudy getup on, they'd freeze! Worry knit into him and he wanted to do more but... well.. he couldn't.

A strange after-effect he didn't notice till later was how warm the tips of his fingers felt after touching the girl's skin and fluttering her eyes shut for the final time. Maybe her body burned a lot of heat. It'd explain the clothing, at least. Still... had she been killed... earlier..? Was this a new... dea—

The thoughts got the better of him and Satoshi began to quake on his own again. His eyes clammed up tight, he just stood there, shivering, in his cut-off clothing and scars folding in every area that his cloth should've covered. Absolutely no memory regurgitated any ideals of why this had happened, why he ended up here, only the girls screaming and the science lab and that boy, Dino, whose annoying silliness he should have countered somehow, but felt too nervous, too awkward... So that nothing told him what his whereabouts had to do with. Whatsoever.

Maybe he'd passed out via fear... or anger or too strong of some emotion... wouldn't have been the first time. Probably fear, because those female voices had scared the crap out of him. Just thinking about them made his blood run cold and shivers coalesce inside of him. Satoshi shook out his head the slightest, feeling safer somehow, able to move on his blue socks missing his—his blue slippers—the same kind as Shige-nii, he felt, and Yoshiki too, and maybe Mayu since she always liked to wear those things that the first-mentioned did. They owned them; somehow he'd lost his... though...

Friends. The calling of friends. He had to find them. Find them all. The thoughts submerged and evolved, overcoming Satoshi's cowardly nature with a desire to find a way out of this creepy mansion-like place and unearth wherever his others had gone to, find them, save them... He always wanted to be reunited with the other eight, but it had never quite gone that way...

To his credit, he almost always came here with his little sister. To be honest... he didn't think he'd rather it any other way. For a... for a long time... he'd thought he felt strongly about someone... only to learn that maybe it was someone else, who'd been right under his nose, who he hadn't quite noticed, dumb Satoshi, that might mean something to him...

Plus, Seiko terrified him and he didn't want to cross that girl's path.

Using bitten and sabotaged memories to find his way around, coppery orbs blinked through a fog of tears in vain attempt to regain his eyesight: really, that one girl in the grass skirt had shaken him up. Not that he hadn't seen the corpses before. Regrettably, that had been anything but his first. Worried, flustered thoughts singing in his head, he tossed back his eyes and glanced to the door he'd just ambled through that still perched open. An insurmountable stench of earth. Thick, wooden, molded together by the cooperation of both oak and dirt, there it stood and stared. Didn't move. Not even a little. Just simply stayed there. Oh, God, it freaked him out.

Some way or another, his saunter turned him around and through dirt flooring and walls of both rocks and other interesting woods, obviously improvised through the rainbow of planks, and a forward and upward stroke sent him into a crook in the corner, perhaps halfway through the entire place he'd been sheltered into—couldn't be completely sure since his memories still were fuzzy, but that sounded about right—and found, to his gasp, a little corner hosting two small openings, the doors again shoved open and left to hang about, and inside, he heard the hissing sheen of running water.

Which was strange. Unless incredibly lucky, they didn't find running water. Trouncing happily inside, prepared to clean off his goop, even to the expense of letting the world see his very hairy legs—wince—Satoshi encountered the little boys' restroom and there, just inside, a hatch of a crack had sprung open like a well and spewed glorious clear liquid in every which way. He jumped about in the crack, not really considering what might've gone on there, washing away his numerous stains of blood also chilling himself to the bone, though that was worth it as he'd never felt so _clean_ in Heavenly Host prior, so he should've expected it but didn't when a haunted tone whispered, _I guess this'll be my campfire of this weirdo place._

"AAH!" He leaped back and banged his head on a stall that then ripped open and allowed brown hair to fall through and into the surprisingly well-rinsed lavatory. Ducking back through and feeling his throbbing head squeeze at him like a knotted hand—or a ghost—had taken him over, Satoshi wearily glanced back at the sprig of water.

 _Okay, so, I guess it makes sense that I'm doing this. Since I'm water and all, duh..._ It... sounded as if it was talking to itself—no, herself, a little gruff on the edges but too high-pitched to be a male. _And then if I use this to... I dunno, maybe it'll help me or signal Dino to come find me... or Pippy..._ This horridly sad sigh came crashing down on him like a wave. _Pippy..._ A... sniffle... _How dare you leave me here alone, Pippy... I'll find you yet... I will..! Yeah, I will. And maybe Jkonna too, because I swear I heard her voice. Every single shadow makes me think of Dino, so I dunno about him. Uuuuuugh, I'd better find them alllllll..._

Apparently someone had been here who could either summon water or was water itself. Tentatively, reaching out a hand and poking the glimmering crescent of the waves, Satoshi mumbled, "Hello..? U-umm... wh—"

 _Now if I wait here, I should find someone... Well, ugh, maybe not. Fine. I'll leave it as a sign, and if anyone saw it, they'll know I was here. I bet Jkonna left a sign somewhere in her writing on the floor and junk, but, well, I can't write, Imma vivosaur, so I'll do this my way._ A content sigh, like it'd finally come to a satisfactory conclusion and felt ready to leave. _Okay! Now to go searching again. I trust I don't royally turd up on that one puzzle place again, that was a pain in the butt to try and redo. My head huurrts... uuuuughh, I wanna complain with Dino..._

A cold air pushed at him like fingers. Felt like the spirit thingy had left or something. Apparently, it had friends.

Then: Dino! _Dino!_ Like the boy he'd seen! Gray, like the shadows—whomever this vivosaur thing was... it knew Dino. It knew that inconsiderate boy who thought this place... he didn't know anything about it. Apparently this friend of his didn't either. Neither of them had the faintest idea. He began to see relationships with this voice and the boy and—and it hit him.

 _You're just all like 'I fell' and man, I don't do 'I fell's because they're dumb and stuff. From here on out, you were just attacked by a pack of hybrid vivosaurs, one gigantic with six fins and... another huge and brown._

Vivosaurs. Six-finned... That... that could describe the... what was it...

 _I'm trying to figure out why the world turned to turd, dang it... I know, I know, little boy: it must've been Rosie or droplet or something; my friends are explosive... Naaaaaaah, it's proooobably Jkonna._

The words were so easy to pull back into memory because they'd happen only moments ago, for all he knew. Before waking up on that table with the manacles rusting and failing at holding him down, that had happened. Dino talking about his friends. The character had mentioned a Jkonna, as well... and a... a Rosie...

Was this female Rosie..? Droplet still didn't sound like a name, so he couldn't be too sure. Six-finned; Rosie; Dino's looking for her...

Something snapped above his head.

Face cold and wet and paling dramatically, he tossed himself out from the chamber and bolted. His eyes widened and showed off an entire rim of white, a sea of white surrounding his island of a copper iris, the black pupil shining and blinking inside. Satoshi ran like he never thought he could, breath and air mingling and streaming around him and sucking the life out of him as he idiotically swerved too much and rammed into a wall, his headache splitting into the starts of either concussion or migraine. And he didn't know which outcome he wanted less.

Shaking his head slightly, staring up through the corner he'd stumbled into just north of the restroom area, Satoshi sat slumped against shadows of wood and dirt, and as he blinked, a multitude of black dots ate through his vision. Stars sprung. He could hardly feel his own head aching and groaned softly, a cold hand gently massaging the temple and further tarnishing his already thin mental state. It caused a small, extra ache, so in the least the brunette stopped. His chest rose and fell in submission underneath his white shirt soaking with wet. Head gently turned upward, he then heard it:

 _CRUUUNCNCHHHHCHHRHHCHCHHCHHRRRCCCCHCHhhhHHhhhhhh..._

A morbid complex of sound and destruction chewing through him and the school itself, causing crumpling excess floorboards to swing and smack straight on top of Satoshi, literally tore through the school. It could hold many things that it looked like floorboards as weak as that shouldn't, but... apparently it either had a breaking point or something let it fall. Wanted it to die. So terribly morbid... but shamefully it sounded like the best answer.

Brown skin and scale clambered and crashed in a symphony of noise and tearing, grinding, coalescing pain as blood and wounds splattered down and into the boy who ducked and rolled and ducked and rolled as he realized what was about to happen. Just happened to come in the direction of where the dissection room was instead of the frontal area containing... the edge of where he was. Bomb shelter. Abandoned Bomb Shelter. Right. Yes. That fit perfectly.

Slams and cracks expanded to a spiderweb of splinters and quakes behind him, but the tired, weary, stretched-thin boy simply collapsed on the dirt in place, not even looking up, only hearing the destruction above and behind. Listening. Forced to listen. Suddenly too tired to move or do anything about it. Coughing weakly, he struggled forward with his hands like claws, ripping up and past what he could hear behind him.

Strings of words stuck unto him like stickers as he struggled away and the floor began to shake. Earthquake. Voices.

 _Jkonna, did you tell Dino where I am?_

 _Well, diga-Droplet, I wrote it on the ground. I'd seen him earlier... but I l-lost him... digadig... So whenever he finds us... we should be okay, digadig. I trust he shows up soon... I really miss him..._

 _Yes, I as well..._

Earthquake.  
Voices.

 _AAH! DID YOU HEAR THAT, DIGA-DROPLET!_

 _Aa-h..._

Cracking, cracking, cracking of wood and dirt and smashing, smashing, breaking, tearing it all apart, piecing the world back together in some sections and demolishing others. The spaces had begun to sew themselves as one again, into a single domain once more, as they always did once the pieces were collecting again. Satoshi, struggling on the floor, cold, wet, damp, dirty, soiled, upset with himself and weakened, could only hear the crunching and tearing and comprehend what sort of purgatory he lay in: what sort of a monster was breathing atop of them: what sort of a terror this was...

No words could express how truly dead he felt. The metaphor behind him exploded with each cracking wave, and he could understand that. He could understand that annihilation. Inside of him, that was it. That he could understand. That he felt. The world around him noticeably darkened with hand-prints of soot in his vision, which tore and chewed away with each movement.

As he struggled past the door that had opened to him only hours ago, it had locked tightly shut. Something ripped; something sprayed; a female screeched. One screech. Two. And only smaller ones after. Whether it shock or what, it didn't take much to shut this female up. She sounded almost demented, or possessed, in a way... the pink-haired girl... when she was still alive. A tan face smacked into the window; something pale; orange; dead—dying.

He didn't know how long it took, how much effort he had spent, how deathly pale and rotting he appeared, or how close he was to losing it, or exactly how black-coated and slimy his surroundings had come, or how many inhumane corpses had followed him. He just moved on his stomach and forced himself onward, inch by inch by inch by inch in some vain effort to make it, do something... live. Please... live...

Somewhere along the way—

A voice.

"Hey... y-you okay, diga..? You look kinda junked up, man, and that ain't good."

Wincing as he pushed against his rib, a strength filled his limb and he somehow found the will to stand. Was it the voice..? Staring up and out, he had to look down to see the person standing there. Hard to see, to a degree: dark, dark brown skin, icy blue eyes, flaming red and orange hair down to her feet and further even, just a little. A scatter of flaming bangs, one sticking out oddly to the side. Mucky clothing, hard to catch. The girl gently rose a hand and waved and smiled. "Uuuuuh, hi there. I'm Jkonna...

"And I think... you just might... be in the wrong place..."

Her tone was oddly soft, though it sounded capable of reaching an arsenal of higher octaves. Because he had nothing better to do, because he was lost enough as it was, because he felt weak until this person stumbled upon him, because he was desperate to finally see someone again: Satoshi followed. A strange, ethereal power boiled in him as he came after her through the nexus of hallways, like he finally could move, finally had the ability to do something about it. Strength. He had strength again. Licking his lips, he moved and realized just how much... _better_... he felt now.

The flame-haired girl down some inches under him, Jkonna, seemed like... a nice person. Nice company. He quietly introduced himself in an upbeat, collected voice he almost didn't remember having. She told him about her life, about her friends, about things that sounded like alligators and had six fins, and big brown buddies who, he realized, had British accents, and these things: vivosaurs, that were actually dinosaurs but not.

And she talked about her best friend. She said that she loved him a few times, because he was her best friend and there was no one else she'd rather have as her best friend, that she could rely on and count on, always, and they could lean on each other's shoulders and it was great. He could relate, only he had eight other people he knew well, to which Jkonna mumbled that she and her best friend plus all of their vivosaurs would make twelve people, so whatever, man.

Satoshi loved someone, too, but not in the way Jkonna expressed her love of Dino. His love was... different. A special different.

She told him that she'd left letters all over the bomb shelter in the dirt in some faint hope her best friend would find them and save her, but that she didn't know if he'd seen them yet, but that was a-okay, because she knew her way out of here now and she had Satoshi and it was all great. They'd be okay; he nodded, that yes, they'd be okay. He assured her that his friends would welcome her in, if she'd like, but she shrugged and said she'd rather find her best friend, but hey, maybe they'd seen him, maybe they could help. Satoshi had seen her best friend and mentioned that maybe they had.

He liked Jkonna. He wanted her to stay with them and make it out alive, too.

He would be sad if she died...

Eventually, somehow, an opening glittering with the semi-darkness—light in comparison to this black—called out to them, and Jkonna did exactly what he thought she would: lead them into it. Glimpsing over and through the walls, he saw little notes scabbed into the dirt, and saw them as little swatches of all that Jkonna must have written to her best friend. She really did love him, and he must've loved her too, only he didn't seem to have found her yet. He hoped they would find each other; if anyone deserved it, they did.

Growing light continued to consume them, and Jkonna had begun to walk beside Satoshi, so they were side to side and he liked that. Really wanted her to stay with them and live on, too, even if her best friend wasn't there. Glancing over, the door at the very edge of the hall gently began to roll open by the force of a stronger soul, easily pulling back the metal, but the face who glanced gently from behind it—

The tears returned. "Yuka..." That childish little grin, pale skin, bright blue eyes—like Jkonna's but not so cold-looking, that silly fire-haired girl—her plastic headband where it always was, blue fabrics of her dress cascading out, and she cried, "Biiig broootherrrrrr!" and waved, a hand sticking out.

He glanced back at Jkonna, whose dark face had gone stony and frozen. A small smile cracked through. "I..."

"Jkonna... please don't go..." He couldn't help it. He wanted her to stay. He wanted her to—

"I—"

His hand reached out to take her smaller, darker one into his larger and paler.

It passed straight through.

It came out a plead. A beg. A whisper. "Jkonna..."

Her eyes shined as she took a little step back, and that smile grew a tiny bit. "I need to go look for Dino... But it was a pleasure meeting you..." Head bowed, she mumbled softly;

"I'm sorry..."

And the dark-skinned, red-haired girl was gone.

 **Me: How many of you expected her to be dead. :3**

 **Jkonna: TTwTT  
**

 **Dino: … ;w; -sobbing-**

 **Jkonna: -adds to his sobbing with more sobbing-**

 **Me: ahhhIfeelbadnowww...**

 **Dino: I don't wanna be in the story anymoooooreeee... waaaaaaahh... TTwTT**


	13. He was Shocked Mindless

**Rupert: ...what was the last chapter I showed in..? It has been quite a while...**

 **Me: .o. That's a very good question. Uhhhhhhhh... I thiiiiiink... chapter... um... two—no... three..? If at the end of three—oh, I specifically remember chapter three being called "He was Missing" for Shige-nii, and you got him out of that mess so—yeah... chapter three... Wow. Gee, I wanna know how you'll react to horror Dina in the story... xD**

 **Rupert: -sighs, looking away- I wish I could see her... I wish I was not so selfish to kill myself because I could never live without her...**

 **Me: Awwwwww**

 **Joe: wAIT, SELFISH? YER SELFISH? DOES THAT—**

 **Me: o-o -destroys everything with a button- YOU CAN'T KNOW**

Chapter Thirteen: He was Shocked Mindless

"Hmmm... I wonder...

They had met again. It was fate, it seemed, for their strings of souls to entwine like this. He and he.

"Isn't that a funny thought?

What could he possibly have been talking of this time?

"So there was like that earthquake... after our conversation... that ruuuuuudely split us up, and then I find you again and—and the ground is like... brown now? That's really freaking bizarre. But I found the second floor again and the gap thingy so that's freaking fantastic. Hey, man, do you know anything about the brown ground?"

"Aaahh, not much've it. I've been victim to changin' floorins, but not brown. Not till now, least."

"Aww, dang iiiiit. I really wanna know what's going on. I mean, it was all fun and stuff earlier and with the whole nailing and junk, but now I'm plain bored! And I can't find Jkonna anywhere, and it's honestly depressing!"

If the boy didn't sugarcoat his words so evenly, he'd spill out to this stranger about the true turmoil within, squeezing him, eating at him, destroying him. His best friend was missing, and it killed him. His best friend was more than what the title implied—much more. Being in some place, unable to see his best friend? Easy. Torture. Complete torture. He didn't know how much more he could take of it, honestly.

"And Droplet and Pippy... ugh, I'm so worried about them... Oh. Did I explain Droplet earlier?

Maybe. No one really remembered or voiced a concern.

"Well, okay, great. So she's a water monster, basically. As in big snout, floppy tail... floppy fins... floppy six fins and a tail. And she's got white on her. And blue. And gray. How does that do?"

"So she's a kroner."

"Yeah, a krona. Wow—wow! You know what a vivosaur is! I dunno if I met anyone else that knows what a vivosaur is! Oh my gosh, miracle. Wait—if you know... so does that like mean...

It began to dawn on the boy that he'd never asked about this man's friends that might be loitering around. There was always a chance they had both met the same person... or they had seen someone they each had common knowledge on. Maybe the adult had assured he hadn't seen Droplet or Pippy or Jkonna, but that didn't mean much for _others._ Others in particular...

"Waaiiiiit... did you come here with anyone? What if we both happen to know someone you've met?

He was almost hyperventilating from the surge of energy.

"Oh my gosh, oh my gosh—HOLY TURD. Please tell me what's up in the hook. Pleaaaaasseeee!"

He tossed himself at the man's legs and hugged them fiercely until his demands were met.

"Aahh, kid, geesh, I'll talk, pard!

And that was all it took.

"Hrrmm... well, lessee, I didn't actually come in here meeting anyone, but... in the corner er my eye... especially now—oh, wow... ah've seen. Ah've seen. And not—not the use'. Not some usual kid from some other place, nosir. I... durno what happened, really, but, I swear... By now, I've seen enough to just know that some friends've mine've been scampering round these here parts. Just gimme a moment... the names should come ter me... hrm...

"Specifically... well, yes, I recall a Pauleen, an' Rupert, too...

His friend knew none of these names to a strong enough level and bobbled his head aimlessly. What he was looking for linked with a name that could register as Jkonna pretending she was someone else. He had high hopes. Unreasonably high hopes.

"An'... some vivosaurs that ain't part of ye... annnd... who else's it... couple'a others... but these ones I specifically know—ah. Right. She was with Rupert at some point...

She. It might be Jkonna! His heart pounded, pounded, pounded in his chest, and he struggled with the wave of saliva in his mouth. It might be Jkonna; it might be Jkonna: what if this was his best friend?! Fear and adrenaline, worry and desire, pressure and excitement: it all knotted up in him with a shiver seizing down his heart in a frigid breath. It might be Jkonna. That was what mattered.

"Ah. Dina. Yessir. Dina. Durno about how they're doin'—but Dina... Yes. I've seen her round the place just not long ago...

"No... she didn't look in the best state... urr..."

He—

A confusing flux of word and muscle collided as the boy collapsed to his olive-colored knees, head crammed between lean hands. He moaned softly. That name... that name... it was a chant: that name... it had to do with something, and that something had nothing to correlate to Jkonna, but that name on his own—

It came to him.

"Sis! My sister!"

"Yer what now?"

"MY SISTER!

Roared it, howled it, like a banshee.

"MY SISTER!"

Tears jammed in his eyes.

"Whoaaa, pard, settle down now... I c'n try to show you where she is... but I don't right have an exact idea..."

The man's temple throbbed in a concerning and almost artistic pattern that the boy may have noticed was his own worry not all shoved down the throat for that one thought. His sister. He had a sister and her name was Dina. She had orange hair, and she wasn't strong at all, more like really weak and pushover weak, and that was all it took to set him off.

"DINA!"

This pumped into his chest and stole his breath away. More important. Much more important. The highest priority he could possibly have in the moment. Unlike Jkonna, tiny, pale Dina was weak; unlike Jkonna, he had no idea his sister had been here in the first place; unlike Jkonna, the way that man had seen her... with his foggy, unfocused, dark—dark— _dark_ orbs... It scared him. Petrified him.

Mounds of unexplained emotions piled over that single word. Dina. His sister: Dina. He had to find this tiny, poor girl, right: right now. Okay. Right now.

Nothing stopped the pump of bare feet on splinters and guttural decays encrusted over wood; no one could halt the fling of gray clothing fabric swinging obviously oversized, painfully oversized; or the figure of burning, seething warmth whose gray orbs tossed and scattered like pebbles with each glance. His cheeks streaked a hot, smoldering red, breath labored and cold, motions frantic and needy, clingy, terrified:

he had to find that girl.

A slump and a clomp and a stomp up steps, rickety and old, creaky, stuffed like cotton via cobwebs, that close, that far, a creature shining of blood-red orbs and disheveled, blonde hair scraped. Moved. Was that moving? Had to be moving. Somehow: moving. Motion. Momentum crawled up its spine and creased it within—into—toward warmth and energy running up and down veins, surging and straining for ability that coursed through in a river of red.

Slits of paper cuts ringed up and down semi-tan arms, from the tip of a finger to the hump of shoulder. Under layers of clothes: what had once been layers of clothes. Tatters and bedraggled lines zigzagged down crisscrossing layers of slowly robotic arcing, moving arms. Hole punctures in such half-smile lazy grins that it was easy to see the cuts. The ensemble; innumerable essay-long line of cuts. Each eked threads of foul-smelling red; did the figure itself catch whiff of it, no reaction had produced to prove. Similar ooze leaked from a crack in the lip, bright and poisonous from its pale pink source.

A rancid old taste lingered in its crooked mouth. Breath steadily pooled from just outside the door of the lip, scraping against the ceiling and walls and flooring closing in on concrete sides, and returning back into the mouth without a single sound. In flowed life; and out. Over and over and over again.

Nestled in its frigidly-clamped fingers lay a rugged, captivating novel, thick around the edges and crusty upon coats of dust. Not a drop of blood had touched it: surprising when taking a glance at its current owner. The creature ambled weakly, purposelessly, any thoughts once contained by its mind drained by the sheer incredulity of the moment. Hard thumping packed the back of its skull instead. Not much could be detected.

Obviously didn't feel the doubling, tripling, quadrupling pain of paper cut after paper cut scarred into pristine skin that had dyed from the number of open wounds. Wouldn't notice as it stumbled into repeated holes in the ground—shoeless and missing socks as well, bare toes bumbling without hope by the guide of sightless eyes. A never-ending sore sight of splinters and darkly shadow-solidified concrete gray slabs, like impure leaves crusted to the ground as the air went chill, had long-come its single sight. One direction it mowed down; one direction all it could go. Never turned. Never stuttered. Only purposeless motion. Sickening, purposeless motion.

Something dull—a paper cut by rubber—scratched into the solemnity, cracking at thick glass. It held for the moment, but as the scratching persisted angrily, buzzing and flickering and swatting, nonstop and ceaseless, it wavered, and it cracked. An august bubble that had surfaced around the creature and the movement of a hallway without borders wavered fiercely, blown by as close as reality could come, until the surface rose with its chilling finger-poking and—

 _pop._

Footsteps, nimble and slow, steadily wended their way down toward the blonde with the cuts and the tears in his clothing. As if wakened from a deep, unsettling sleep, his head stilled abruptly, eyes blinked, and miniature blonde spikes shook with the air they caught. Yawning deeply, fingers stretched and a hollow _thud_ resonated throughout the chamber. The very edges of the way, cut-off by the faintest hue of light, began to give off a sense of termination. Ending. The dawn at the end of the night.

Jaws parted and jagged teeth oddly dressed in wood chips of splinters—teeth only gently stained red—a male rose out of his state and stared blatantly into the abyss. Rings wrapped around his sharp and dark orbs. "Goddamn," he moaned, "whaaaat the hell haaaaappened..?" A scowl sharpened over his face. "No, seriously—"

"GODDAMMIT! AAHHHHH!"

"What th—"

"AAAAHHHHAAAAHAHAHHHHHhhhhhh... yyyYYYOOOOSHIIIIKIIIIIIIIIiiiiiiii..."

"AYU—"

"STAY AWAY FROM HIM, YOU BASTARDS! STAY AWAY FROM HIM NOW—"

The sudden addition of the feminine voice sounded as if it had more on its mind to share, but any showing of it disintegrated and replaced with an unearthly gurgling, retching, sucking notion. Like air was that far away. Like the goddamn school was unfairly ceasing life to someone and choking them up. Goddamn school. Feet devoid of footwear pounded and throbbed over crusty wood as the boy whose name had been called—and defended, he noted drily—searched out what sort of punk had just started spluttering his name and made him wake up. Did that even make sense.?

No—wait. His pace almost slowed until he worked his brain into moving again and thought about what had just happened at the same time. Oh, hell, he knew exactly who that was... Tan cheeks flushing the harder he ran, he pushed himself all the further as thoughts bounced around inside of him, jittery and thick and cold and scary, yes, scary.

It had been some time ago, of course. Most things here that were actually goddamned memorable happened at the beginning. Plus, he hasn't been seeing this specific scene for some time. Maybe it meant something. Hell, maybe not. Yoshiki didn't know all of this occult crap: that was Ayumi's job.

"Ooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh...ooouuu _uuhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..."_

That call slapped him across the face and sent the memories reeling faster.

It had been some time ago, of course. Yes, that it had. He hadn't seen Naho around all that much anymore. Saenoki. Naho. Whatever he was supposed to call her. She was dead: what the hell did it matter? Unlike her, he and Ayumi and all of them were still alive. Stupid Naho. He smirked at that, and the memories whipped by faster.

Flashing, red glasses perched atop ghostly pale skin stretched thin over her little bird-like face. Dreads adorned by the same-color-red beads split down under her shoulder-length strings of cool blue hair he found much uglier than Ayumi's. Didn't think he'd find anyone who had his girlfriend's hair color that ugly: Naho was an exception. With a fancy, lace-fringed skirt-and-suit outfit complimented by girly-but-official pink-and-purple color, a fancy jacket tied over her somewhat thick waist, not nearing pudgy but just thick in its own, Naho herself was quite a something.

Quite a something that had almost killed someone quite a many times. The gentle and sweet name _Mayu_ bit down under his tongue. Damn Naho. She'd told Yoshiki lots of useless crap over the years, and if she wasn't dead, he'd've loved to sock her over it. But, see, she was dead, and Yoshiki planned to stay alive. He had to live; all of them had to live. It was like family: with even the most annoying one missing, it felt wrong to the ones remaining.

Damn Naho.  
 _"I'm a special spiritualist qualified to examining the mediums and the influences corresponding, as well as a number of ghostly matters to the subject"  
"Might I say that you'd make a disastrous bodyguard for that fucking dumbass of a girl?"  
"Someone with influence as strong as her—as unpredictable and terrifying as her—deserves someone better than you. I don't care if you're kind and considerate and witty, you're not enough for her. And you never will be"_  
She was wrong.  
 _"Ayumi's going to die in your hands. You can't protect her. No more than I can protect that little friend of yours who keeps going splatter-splatter against the walls"  
_ She was wrong.  
 _"You're worthless—"  
_ Goddammit, she was wrong!

He could almost feel the bile dripping down his face in an upheaval and unlovely hell that Ayumi wouldn't gripe at him about, because he didn't get this disturbing or messy unless he meant business. Okay, Yoshiki was strangely clean—he didn't like to feel dirty; was that so weird? Was that so creepy? Geez. Well, he did, and it unnerved him to get this disgusting, but this place did things to people.

His voice hollered out a bark in the cold distance: "AYUMI!"

At no stranger a moment, the sudsy thought of that orange-haired adult with the huge, monster-mouthed cowboy hat and the boots and the clothing contaminated his brain and only made his voice electrify with all the louder volume in a need to reach her. His girlfriend. Shinozaki Ayumi. Kind of—very important. For once in his life, he could thank that weirdo Joe for taking a hit for him back then, so that now he could catch that short bluenette of his and carry her away from destruction, a tactic he's used multiple times throughout their span of being in this damn school.

 _POW—_ His hand slapped against the crook of a concrete hallway of the second wing and sent jitters up into the curves of his paper cuts, the shreds in his three layers of sleeves, torn horrendously and almost hanging off him. There, edged into the corner of the concrete landing, seated atop a sill to an opening, a window, she had miraculously wrenched open: impossible. The dappled stench of storm outlined her figure, set her blue twin tails of hair to flame, burned cold and dead in her eyes, with pale fingers reached out and gently plucking away the locks on the glass to send her out onto the floor and to her remarkable death.

That window only opened when someone was about to fall out of it. Hell, he knew this: Shige-nii suicided on that window however many damn times he'd find freaking Mayu's corpse and go insane. And windows, in this wretched hole, didn't open. Never. Unless it was this one, and someone was about to die jumping or falling or something—out of it. Ayumi sat there, so perfectly poised and, he realized as he slowly, as if to not spook a lively herbivore, inched closer, pasted by fuzzy coating of what at first looked like fine, white sugar, until the stench of the dead rolled out onto him.

Whatever the hell that was, it wasn't freaking sugar. Fuzzy, musty, old, stinking and proffering malevolent odors tucked underneath his tongue, forcing a gag reflex to the end of its tale, that much closer to the edge than it already was on a regular basis. Realizing his time ticked just behind his ear, and if he pulled this off wrong _she was going to die_ , he glanced warily into bloody red orbs and murmured, "Do you have any band-aids?" in his throaty warble.

Nope. No idea if this was the right thing. Just trying to sound affable and altogether pleasant or else the ghost would hurt him. He knew how to throw a low key thanks to these demons always trying to possess his girlfriend. It didn't matter shit what Naho's tempestuous mouth splattered at him; he had learned how to go calm in these situations in his own Yoshiki way.

Running a slurred and shaking hand through his blonde hair, catching it on something sticky and old, he winced, said, "I feel your pain." It might work. Maybe. Please. He inched forward as he talked, trying to keep it casual, trying to know what the hell he was doing. But yelling at ghosts never worked, so... "After opening that book on band-aids, all of these paper cuts and everything—and then you show—I mean, yeah, I totally feel your pain."

For an entire second, dark orbs searched into an untimely red, which felt cold and unearthly, swimming in a pool of bodies—which he'd done before, so he knew what the hell he was talking about—and his warmth rattling deep inside of him, heart beating awkwardly and staring, staring at the dead face that had taken over the girl he freaking loved: as messed up as it was, as much as a disturbing snafu this felt like, it looked like it'd be okay, and they had somehow managed to reach an understanding.

The next second resulted in complete chaos as the monster possessing Ayumi kicked open the thatch of the window in her tiny feet and lifted off.

Yeah, no way that was going to work.

Tan fingers lurched out in a crazed sense of speed and met the pale ones hanging upon the tiniest sliver of concrete. This'd happened before. When she caught control of herself again, she had a whole system by now for getting out of it and recovering, and she that easily snapped right into oh-hell-I'm-falling-grab-the-window-Yoshiki-must've-messed-up-again-that-idiot. Okay, he _tried._ But this was both a two-man thing and Naho did happen to be right about one thing: Yoshiki wasn't the most talented guy ever at occult crap. He tended to yell at the ghosts possessing the pale soul beside him, and that didn't help matters at all: and when he had a relaxed situation he always screwed those up bad. Thought if he said one thing it'd work when really the opposite was in effect. Like the whole band-aid dilemma.

Yeah, but if he just went out to hug her she'd be gone! And if confronted by a peaceful situation so he was without yelling disorders he'd hug her! But he couldn't because of that window!

Pinching the bridge of his nose, sucking in a breath, his other hand pulled up and in a shivering, dust-layered person piercing him with similarly dark orbs. Instinct proved to happen first and the blonde reached without thinking as he grasped short Ayumi and held her tightly to him, one hand draped over her back and another over her head, gently stroking her dark blue hair.

"A-aah..." she squeaked a little strongly; then, "Yoshiki..."

"I'm not letting go of you."

"I know that!" Her squeak grew louder. "Geez!"

"Good, then!" he thundered back. "I was just worried because you were being possessed by a spirit that got me first, goddammit! Don't I have a right to be freaked out by this?" There had once been a time where he wouldn't so unceremoniously announce when he deserved thanks from her, but kept it to himself. That time had long passed. When the blonde did something for her and she did that, he'd react as he felt needed to.

In response, she mumbled warmly into his chest, "I guess..." By then the sensations they had both shared was contagious and had silenced each of them for the moment. Yoshiki, staring through narrow slits down at the situation he held in his arms and couldn't help but sleepily grin at, had no words other than mystified by how he felt, by how he still couldn't believe this had happened, that this girl _actually liked him back._

See, for the longest time she'd had a crush on one of his best friends whose name was Satoshi whom he didn't want to be jealous of—but _she was crushing on him!_ Drove him round in circles for the longest time... but somehow... eventually—as Yoshiki did let this annoying bluenette know when he did something for her and her dense head couldn't even see it, somehow, someway, some possible, wonderful way, she responded positively to his own reaction and then, well, this happened.

Damn.

Had no words for it, so: damn. The sense of strange and incredible warmth enveloped him, and it brought forth a larger, stabler smile on his face to think about her. He thought about Ayumi a lot. About how she has been class representative for 2-9 until the whole incident that brought them here; how she never gave into the shit the school gave her and dug on, and made sure, without even asking if he wanted to or not, that they would save everyone in their group before even trying to go home, that nobody could be left behind; he recalled her loath for adults, mainly males, and the incident where he'd met her that had involved such hatred; that dumb twinkle her eyes got at the mention of the occult, how she shivered yet sparkled at it.

Really everything. But that was some of it, too. Some of her. Of Ayumi. His heart beat down on him at the thought of that girl and everything about her. It sort of overwhelmed him, the warmth his buoy in the overflowing water that happened to be her in all of her effulgent glory. One hand clasped over her head, the other tight over her back like a cross with her body, her own hands gently snug around him; he leaned in and pelted her cheek a swift kiss, uncaring to the dust that coated her and then smudged over his lips.

He didn't even want to kiss her: he needed to; he yearned to. The burst of warmth that radiated from her cheeks after his movement drifted and succumbed in his heart, and he could only give a lopsided grin at the ceiling. Oh, hell, he loved her.

And she loved him.  
And he could hardly believe it.

Out of the corner of his eye careened a creature tattered and stapled together by a certain cloak of red, red like the guts of fruits that he knew the creature would willingly scoop out and splatter for no reason other than its own shrewd entertainment. Stiffening, he reached for his dear's small hand to take her and chase after that little bitch upon the emotion that they had something to solve when, with a look, his blood froze for a moment and he halted for Ayumi, who leaned over and, just underneath the sill, gently avoiding a musty collection of books that looked like something he'd found earlier, withdrew holding onto a pair of withered down once-white scraps of marked, crippled papers. A shiver slid down his throat, into his spine and through it as a knife when he caught sight of it. His heart jammed into his throat.

"Oh my God."

"Yeah, I know." Her loud, attention-piercing tone directed him and gently placed the piece into his hand. A new warmth coated him as he took in the sight of that paper scrap returned to him: without it... he'd rather not think. Their heads slid an identical turn, two pairs of dark, sharp blue orbs piercing down the concrete landing at the tangled thing, knots of black hair submerging her figure, but that trademark red dress upholding the same tears and rips as it always had gave her away. Stone gray skin peeled off with a finger that pointed, erected, straight betwixt their heads. Her childish squeal didn't pule out and tremble, like a bubble, and envelop; the teens shivered all the same. They had been subject to it for such a long time that just seeing this thing gave away certain horrors they each could remember not all that fondly. Her other hand snagged and gripped his, and his own entered their knot of tepid recollection. Of memories of joys and of pains that shackled them down in this world.

Glancing down the rim of a sidelong hallway, Yoshiki could've sworn he saw a person perched in a cowboy hat staring him through.

But they had business to do.

In a sudden sense of finality that camped by the both of them and entered their souls in unison, boy and girl released one of their two pairs of held hands, one smaller and paler as the other larger and tanner, and led forward, as the little girl in front of them skipped onward past the holes in the caked, dirty ground, and so did they move on after.

Downstairs a similar scene had been played out, a sort of tango, a dance, that had ended in the shrill cry of someone breaking.

 _CRACK!_

Some _thing_ breaking. A jumbled mess in a boy's breast pocket splintered from the form that had once been glasses and caught the brunt of a sharp object's lunge, which then shattered that into a clump of brown pottery as well, not so murderous or deadly or in any way subject to murdering the boy that stared coldly to the space just behind her head where she couldn't reach. In a commanding snare, he spoke softly, disastrously, her way:

"Naomi." An order. Her name. "Naomi." Ripples shot down her side and absorbed into the earth below. "Look at me." She didn't move. " _Look at me._ " A whole new level of authority rose with the figure as one of his soft, husky hands clasped over her squirming arm and pulled her away. Orbs cutting, even without the fringe of glittering glasses, stabbed for reach inside of her and found it breathlessly, no resistance met.

Hesitantly, fearfully, tentatively, a single pair of slippery, grizzly brown orbs shuffled and pored up into cautious and almost violent—but not quite; protected by a foggy white—green eyes held into the composure of the one and only Morishige Sakutaro.

She—whatever just happened—whatever just—

She hadn't killed him. His glasses—oh!—his glasses! The pottery piece must have hit his glasses; of course he wouldn't let them get wet on the walkway! Relief swarmed and filled her cheeks in an undulating warmth, and with a pathetic squeak, Naomi limply fell and clung to the boy's legs, the black fabric coating pressed against her face as she whined to the world wordlessly. "Ahh—Naomi..." Gentler, now. Understanding whatever the hell had just happened, it seemed to be calming now. The maelstrom had left her. "Calm yourself, Naomi..." A hand didn't reach down, didn't dare touch her anymore now that she had touched him, arms and face curled into his legs from the knee down, clutching harmlessly but with a seize that prevented him from moving. Although even if he did remove himself from Naomi's quaking grasp, his glasses had been struck in place of his heart, so it wasn't like he could see where he was going. Blind as a bat: all of them knew that. He was stuck with her.

There were worse people to be stuck with. As well, this sort of predicament wasn't the first time Shige-nii had had his glasses broken in the school; there were others, times that usually would take in place of a life a simple shattered heap of glass and twine: spectacles gone to ruin. Though he could manage it. Having actually enabled himself to trust the others, Shige-nii could stand being forced to have Naomi coach him around the place. In the state she currently sat in, her butt literally slapped hard against the ground when she'd begun to wail, blue skirt spread like flower petals to the yellow stem of a shirt up and through, it would be he doing more the coaching than her; he, the one without the glasses. Being sightless didn't make the blind less useful.

Like a wounded animal, Naomi, still shivering, shaking, using one of the fabrics on the legs she clutched to wipe her leaky eyes and nose, once pale skin tone surrounding worn raw from irritation, managing to unroll herself, released her hold and glanced away from the bluenette, her cheeks set aflame. Self-conscious of her state, Naomi struck to her pink-slipper-adorned feet and struggled to move—until her body collapsed against the ground just steps after. "Aaugh!" she grunted, grinding her teeth together, gathering her hands underneath her, and pushing futilely at the stubborn scrawl of floorboard below, supported by the entrance of the second wing around them.

A soft sigh. "Here. Let me help you." Those hands she remembered from earlier came to cushion her fall and lift her again, allowing her puerile state to use his shoulder to hang onto standing herself: even the most basic of physical activity have become foreign to her. Somewhere in her head, she smiled softly at herself that this was what Heavenly Host had done to her. No: past the darkness and the hate, and the struggling, the pain, past all of that, though truthfully that was a lot to go past: the elementary school brought her closer to eight other people so that she was forced to let every single thing that made her up to be entrusted onto his shoulder, so that if she wasn't so focused and assured that Shige-nii was with her, he could easily toss her into a ditch and leave her to die.

But he wouldn't do that; this place did things to people.

Some things wonderful.

In a way, Seiko had made her this positive about the works of the world, even if she had been the one requesting this positivity in the first place. Seiko— _Seiko!_ Brown curls styled the way her mom had wanted her to do it, those years before she disappeared; kind face; silly; careful—car _ing_ ; special... special to Naomi. Her thoughts collected with an audible gasp.

"SEIKO! WHAT HAVE I DONE!"

Hands gently yanked at hers. "She's okay. I don't know why, but she's okay. And you're okay; and I'm okay; and Mayu... is okay." Glancing to the side, she caught sight of Shige-nii's distantly-watching orbs, out into the crooked entrance of the door, where a swatch of lighting set the opening on fire for a blindingly white single moment before the interior grew unnaturally dim again. "She's with Mayu, on the other side of the school. For once... we're all here..."

It was fact in a world without logic that three certain characters nigh always died at some point. It was just a thing that had to happen, had to always happen, in the never-ending repetition of loops of the nine gallant souls. Quietly, her hands only beginning to regain circulation, still frigid, though Shige-nii clutched them all the same, Naomi whispered: "This never happened before."

"Technically," he added softly, always technically with him, and that made her grin, "on Sachiko's birthday, we all see each other for a full day before we have to remove ourselves and reenter the darkness of the nexus all over again. Excluding those proportions, yes. Never before..." A shake of the head.

Then, "Why are you smiling?" So he'd seen.

"Because... because..." Eyes devoid of any more tears, they only chipped and Shige-nii watched her silently. "B-because..." Having no way of wording what she felt, pale arms ripped from his comfortably weak grasp, there but not limiting, and tossed them about him into a sudden, tight hug.

He sighed in defeat. It was known fact that Shige-nii preferred not to be touched by others; although it seemed he wouldn't let go of her this time. Naomi didn't regret her choice. Eventually, feeling both calmer and that her message was obvious, she loosened her grip and the tall friend of hers quickly released, holding on particularly tighter at the wrist as if to prevent unneeded hugging to go on again. But she felt it was needed. Shige-nii's stature had relaxed some, gone a little more at ease with Naomi, justified that whatever had happened—whatever that _thing_ was—it'd ended. All good. Safe. He held one of the eight he wanted to keep up with by his hand, and she was okay... just like Mayu... just like Seiko—he promised Seiko was okay.

"Could you lead us through the walkway..?" He sighed softly, then, "...My glasses... so..."

"Of course, Shige-nii!" she responded immediately, her boisterous and tough tone in correspondence to his quieter and softer. Careful to use the arm she clasped only as a weight to hold her in place, not to get too clingy—he seriously preferred not to be touched by others and usually displayed a showing of distaste when it happened to make sure it didn't again. Seemed like... well... they _had_ been in here for a long time.. only made sense some sort of reaction like this might occur. Though that was important to her, Seiko sat on her mind and that, that garnered all of her available attention, the thought of that curl-haired ditz alive and breathing, healthy, and Naomi steadily fed the way into the sopping wet line of brick and stone, the single passage into the other side of the school, where two other people they needed to reunite waited.

 _Skish... skish... skish... skish..._ Their slippery toes made funny noises, squishy, spongy of water and icy fabric that had once been their socks and slippers. Shige-nii didn't seem to notice; his eyes had become encrusted in a strong, radiant seal of emerald that looked unbreakable the way he had said Seiko and Mayu sat, just in the crook of the elder wooden hallway, the big sister of the two wings. If the school was a bird, it'd be a rotten vulture. She sneered at the thought, mentioning it to Shige-nii whose blue-haired head shook softly to it but didn't prick it either.

 _Skish... skish..._ Their silent stroll in the rain continued, slow, lazy, careful. Had to be careful; one member could hardly walk, the other hardly see.

 _Skish skish skish—skish...FWUM—_ "Ahhhh!" With a tug, she fell back and did not get sucked into whatever lost her a slipper, its blush of pink coloring whistling through the air without purchase of land. She felt the big and warm hand clutching hers chill vibrantly as he tugged back, and, glancing forward and down, faced a crack in the bridge that had no end, no stopping, and reached just—just far enough that one couldn't jump it and make it. Just far enough. Damn vultures; damn school.

Desperate, cupping her lips, the stout teen tore back and screeched: "SEEEIIIIKK—" when a pale hand swam in her vision and pointed out the bouncing pair of humans, each brunette and sopping, one drenched in a thickly designed black jacket, stout like Naomi, and her breath chilled the rain in the air. They saw them already.

Louder and stronger-willed than the slipping Naomi, who dug what she had left of shoes into what felt like winter to keep herself afloat in the flood-like street, clasping desperately at he, Shige-nii shouted back at the two girls: "WE HAVE TO MEET UP SOMEWHERE ELSE!"

Perhaps they could hardly grasp his words, but Naomi heard them fine. Her figure spiked with chills; her cheeks froze with tears she thought she had dried of. Apparently enough bad things would break people open again. Who'da thunk. The soft, airy call of Mayu crying back that she couldn't think of where they could have such rendezvous, and Seiko cheerily piped up with that it wasn't a rendezvous, it was an assignation, which apparently meant a meeting place between lovers, that rascal, and Naomi _wanted_ to scream back but there was no way she could, and Shige-nii's green orbs kept glancing at her like to assure she wasn't going to do anything stupid, though she could understand that part.

Pausing for a moment, allowing everyone who was yelling to catch their choked-up breaths, all four remained drizzly with silence, the rain pelleting at them easily sparking at their moods. So close to seeing the ones they needed to see, it was averagely difficult—in homes like Heavenly Host, this only ranked an averagely difficult—to understand that they would have to rendezvous—o-or an assignation, _whatever—_ somewhere else. This school was full of tricks; there was something, for sure. There once had been a time, so bleak and long ago, like the strike of lightning seen but the thunder miles away, only longer, and longer, where this place had seemed both illogical and impossible.

It had its own reason. Somehow, they had to be okay. Clenching the thin scrap of paper she'd found from that pot—her paper, she knew, it dawned at her—Naomi felt that swamp of guilt at it. Her paper—not Naomi's. Seiko's. She had both of them. What if Seiko was... was hurt or something? No—she had to believe they would be okay. Besides...

Shige-nii, after murmuring to himself and slightly to the side of Naomi what his intentions had evolved to, lifted his black-donned figure and shouted out: "WE'LL DOUBLE BACK FOR YOU IN THE ABANDONED BOMB SHELTER!"

Oh.

Of course.

His hand met hers in a flood of warmth and reason and safety, knowing that they each would protect one another and in the end be okay, the bluenette steered the brunette with his voice, and she led him as well as she could without allowing a soul to so much as touch him. Wanted him safe. Needed him safe. Needed all of them safe; each other safe, until it crisscrossed and enveloped so much that a hand-knit scarf from a grandmother—or perhaps from the little girl in red—couldn't deter from their shining strings of souls tied in together.

Perhaps not so far as a few steps, but an eon apart, a still creature lay stiffened against wooden wall. Its motions creaked and eked upon the floor, happening to be punctured through with wounds, lots and lots of disturbing wounds. Most bled shadow; some color: some a vivid red as for color. He slept like a king on a pile of limp, gently warm bodies that had been meshed into either a throne or camouflage so that nothing harmed him as the world played out seamlessly in front. Then, with a twitch, life gradually birthed in return.

Jaws outstretched in an intoxicating yawn as long arms cloaked in dark fabric stretched. A summery-sweet voice jutted by the sound parting from within him and blinked blearily. Chocolate brown eyes searched fruitlessly for what could have been anything, he didn't know, felt kinda wonky though, and wordlessly removed the thick, brown hat on his head, and out fell something plush and posh and... black. Like... like he didn't know. Like a tiny mammal—no, it looked like a dimetro, sort of, like Dina's dimetro, like Torn.

A tag provided the name of this creature, just peeled off the edge of its furry, black tail: cat. So, he deemed silently, lifting the posh thing that almost felt weightless as it let off puffs of stuffing which filtered out of its small amount of wounds, this must be Cat. Like Torn, like Trikko—like Mith, his own vivosaur who unfortunately was not here—but Cat. It soon found home in a pocket from his jacket of thick, warm black with also brown fabric when scrutinized. Shimmying off of his throne and onto creaky oak grounds that felt eerily like a banshee boardwalk or something, Joe clacked his knee-high boots against the earth and decided that he must've had some tarnation of a nap there. Nothing'd been strong enough to wake him, so far. Weird. He wondered why. Scratching his orange-curled head, he replaced his hat and ambled back from place.

It came back in a bleed of memory, shifting right up in his face until he was blind with the thought: that durn... _thingy_... He'd taken a hit for his fellow Yoshiki because no way no how was he lettin' that pard take a brunt from whatever in tarnation that thing'd been, and now he was wakening feebly on the ground and suffering the slightest of migraines, the toughest of headaches. A hand moved and permanently found purchase on his fair-colored forehead. It felt like it helped. Maybe a little bit.

Other memories, like stars, glistened in the overhang of shadow. Felt like he'd spent a night outside to sleep—until in recalling that it'd been night when he ended up here—ended _up_ here... Golly, that felt like some spell away. Been here for some time. Didn't know how long, but his head ached like some lad had shot stones at him. Not that anyone had: right? Maybe.

Those stars of memories coldly seeped into him, and he saw a few other things, too, other things he'd done all at the same time: there was a little girl in a blue smock who ran and cried and ran some more, and then he took her by the nape of the neck like a baby vivosaur and led her away to where she belonged and opened a door for a boy with brown hair; there was Yoshiki... just Yoshiki—and guilt, guilt for losing him; there was two pairs of couples, at least he thought they were couples, three girls and one boy, and he lost his jacket and someone snagged it; and there was... there were... other things, too, that scraped irritatingly at the back of his mem—

Dino.

Yeah, him. He'd seen him some. A lot, really, Their souls just so happened to graze some lucky three times; and he... he saw many things. He'd been to many places to see many people. And he'd seen Dina somewhere... righ', righ'. And Torn. Torn's corpse. Torn was dead. He took the message a little blearily: halfway to sleep and still thoroughly discombobulated, as well as his emotions were straight-out calm seas as it was, so... not much action from the rodeo. But Dino didn't like it when he mentioned her—mentioned Dina... said she was his sister...

Hoo boy, things just kept gettin' more worrisome round these bends. Speaking of worrisome.. now that he thought about it... when he slowed his breathing to a shallow silence...

 _Tump...  
tump...  
tump...  
tump.._

Movement crackled into life as one might with flames, as they popped and worsened in noise, until it felt visibly like it was crawling up his ears. Wincing, Joe slackened the weight on his forehead in a meager attempt to stifle the pumping rush within, only to realize that he had been drawing his fingernails and causing five little crescents of red to spill out of his temple. Oh, geez. What a mess. Casually wiping the hand against black jeans, Joe observed the silence that had resulted with the back of his head still facing the source of the sound. What would he find if he turned?

The thought struck him in the for of a bludgeon of hope: was it... perchance—may it be, like, some soul he could downright recognize? Someone who could offer a hand here and they could try to get over whatever this feeling of apprehension was together? Like—ah, like Yoshiki... he was a fantastic form of the word grotty—which only served to remind him of the other form... of what happened to their other matey, the adorable brown lug of vivosaur: ah... poor Pippy. Joe still hadn't the heart—maybe his emotions were simpler but he needn't a lasso to pull himself a soul—to tell that boy what had become of his vivosaur. The thought... he just didn't think it.

Cold, hard silence blew down like a beat from the sun in the tundra.

 _Tump  
tump...  
tum—_

His breath almost fell apart. Was that thing coming for him? It... it could've been Yoshiki, but wouldn't that blonde buddy raise his throaty and deep, sharpened tone and announce himself? Yoshiki was the kinda guy to announce himself. If he did something, if something needed disclosure, mentioning, he was the guy. He'd do it. Maybe... who else could it be? Ah—was it Dina? Did he _finally_ score his doll? His near-daught—

 _TUMPTUMPTUMPTUMPTUMP—  
THWACK!_

He fell to the floor, a sudden and new weight surged into him and forcing them each onto the hard smack of wood. The thing that had just tackled him mumbled against his ear in a swatch of warm breath and beating heart, all beating heart and breathlessness: "Tsukaasaaaaaaaaa..." which of course caused Joe to mumble back, "Who's that?" His western accent clashed with the girl's gentle, breezy one, and the mentioning of his response caused her hands to dig into him, to hug him closer. Okay... this was a little leery...

"Ahhh... your voice... it still sounds... so similar... to back then..."

"N-no... seriously..." He didn't have the strongest authority, but his charisma always found a way to net him attention. He was a pretty formidable fossil fighter—happened to be his life duty, career, that—and when he asked others to listen to him, it happened. This was because of how formidable he was and that slice of charisma—so sad, neither tools happened to work on the lady who'd crashed against him and forced them both over on the holes and the pockmarks and the wood. Lots of cracking wood.

She squeezed him a little tighter, shifting so that her palms crushed against his shoulders and held him down pretty durn well, knees pinning at his back. "I can't believe you're here... after you disappeared... Before this school, before everything..." For emphasis, her needles of nails came that much closer to skewering herself a Joe-kabob. The palms massaged into him at those specific moments. "I still... can hardly believe that you're here, Tsukasa... and now that you are, I'm not letting you out of my grasp again..."

"What if I'm not him?" he wheezed.

Thoughtfully, the lady's voice stopped, and for full seconds, he couldn't feel her thick, tepid warmth spilling out over him with breath. "But you are."

"I'm Joe Wildwest, miss," he mumbled, "not... not this feller you speak of... Sorry?"

"Tsukasa..?" Wary. Worried. No—wait. It came back in a rush and she clutched at his shoulders tighter, her legs taut against his back and obviously not moving any soon.

"Y-yeah. Him...

Hesitantly: "Tsukasa..." He had a funny name, that boy who apparently looked like him: _Sue-kah-sah..._

No... no... An oddly calming, relaxing wave crashed into him and sucked at him, pulling him and covering him with thoughts and pinpricks of things, at first, then growing into holes, into many things, many that melded and collided in a spray of color and feeling, just in the touching and rolling of his tongue to proffer that one little word. That one little name. A name. His name—that boy's name. Tsukasa's name... Tsukasa... Mikuni's name... That was his last name—whose last name?—Tsukasa's last name. Didn't even need this lady to tell him. Joe's last name was Wildwest, not Mikuni.

Tentatively, he whispered to himself the simpleton words "Tsukasa Mikuni" and the colors came back brighter, frigid, thawing and freezing up into him, forcing him under and poring memories into him that there was no way he should've had. The female hugging herself tightly against him on the floor had heard him whisper the name, had gone rapt over him, over his voice—his sunny and rolling voice with that funny accent that fit him like his hat, which fit him much more snugly than it looked.

Another lifetime ago, that name... that name fit him just as well as the hat on his head. No—no, this was him. This literally-this _was_ him. This... this whole Tsukasa... guy..? This was him? This was him. It entered him in a waft and a wave of acceptance, of gratitude. It began to clear in him: the reason, the meaning, durn—the ration behind it all. How it all fit together. Joe—Tsukasa... whatever. He was here for a reason. Apparently the young woman still tightly hugging him knew more about it than he, but same thing.

A single image of a boy with his hair, only shorter, less curly, framed atop a metal bench, staring up into the countless dazzling sort of leaves, beside a female in yellow-and-blue clothing with brown hair, spoke up to his attention.

"Why am I here?" he muttered via an impossibly soft tone.

"Because I needed you," came her response so playfully, so matter-of-fact, so true. The fact that her voice held so strongly—she believed this to a point of no doubt even attempting to shadow her—caked him and slathered him with a thick sweetness he hadn't seen prior. And more acceptance. Acceptance that ruled him night and day and enraptured his heart with this random emotion he'd never felt before and, slithering back from that girl's awkward grip and turning back round, he finally saw the face of the lady who needed him. Who needed Tsukasa—who needed him.

Another rush of intense emotions and calming sensations. Him. So he was related with this school, with this whole toss of him being folded up and plummeted into Heavenly Host Elementary School, so that... something with this las—Yui. Shishido Yui—well, just Yui. He liked Yui more. Yes, her. Her and the near-spikes of short hair cascading in a wave of chocolate just down to the ends of her chin, perhaps a little farther, reaching for shoulder-length and not quite capping it. Luminescent purple orbs watched him silently under a shadow of awe, her lips parted under a silent gasp. Pale skin, paler than his fair with the tint of red, shone on her face, on her hands that now tugged into his larger and softly redder ones. She had this creature he now recognized as a "panda" from the other lifeline of his dangling from her neck, and she had a pretty pink blouse and a navy blue skirt that reminded him of the other females he'd seen running around.

Because it was one of the few memories he could tangibly grasp, he asked in his Joe Wildwest accent that originated from a Tsukasa Mikuni tone: "Did yew become a teacher?" Seeing the look in her eyes, he asked, then, softer, "So they're like... yer children?" She seemed about to object to something, cheeks puffed out and face marking in color, when he cut her off all over again: "Shh. I get it... I get it..." When it came to him.

Children. Children... like _his_ children, in a way, like _Dina, Rupert.._. And he realized silently. Dino. Dino, too. They were all connected... they were all... He shook himself, orange curls bouncing. It all came from Joe... Tsukasa... Joe, who in return had gotten some of the people he was connected to to show up, and then they brought others and then their ragtag team of kids—they all kids, him not so much, just like Yui—had entered. How in tarnation had the ghost whomever leader thingy of this place figure it out? Wow...

So... that meant... what he'd seen... it meant that _his_ kids were saving _her_ kids, now. And they were all related to the creature monster that had started this thing... and as he'd heard from one of those kids, his ol' buddy Yoshiki the blonde Kishinuma, they'd been stuck here for a long time. Only now did the pard's mind begin to realize just how long this could have been, if his original spirit had like... changed... and she was still here, still the exact same person, only a little older and missing in this place for decades, centuries: who knew?

Migraine crushed and fully forgotten, Joe or Tsukasa or whoever he was, both, he supposed, pulled the shorter female up with him and couldn't help but grin lopsidedly some, the beam a slipping curve over his full-moon of a cheek. "So if I came cuz've you... and my kids came cuz've me... then how'd you get here?"

Wordlessly, she pushed herself closer to him, which Joe supposed was nicer than anything else, and murmured in that airy tone of hers he was starting to find both kinda similar to his and kinda really nice, "Because of Sachiko," like it was fact. "Because she took us here. And we're supposed to break her curse... the nine of us..." Yui's royal orbs glazed over from the thought of it. It dawned on he how similar her orbs were to... to Pippy's. Poor seismo soul. Came from Dino—as did those other friends've his, Droplet and Jkonna, and wasn't there a Rosie, too?—and he came from Dina, and Rupert and Pauleen and Torn and Trikko, they all came from Dina, and she came from him. Or maybe the others came from him too. He guessed this Sachiko wasn't picky and plucked at random. Durn it. She should've brought Mith, his ptera. He loved Mith, man.

Some characters were wholesomely, obviously, palpably missing, but it seemed like they had a bunch of kids netted from the situation. "Hrrmkay, so Sachiko started it all. And how do we end this all? I wanna break ya outta the curse." No, that was a lie: he _really needed_ to break her out of the curse, which clashed with his wind-like and breezy, gentle, simple personality, but it all worked somehow. He felt like the Tsukasa in him was the one and same. But Joe himself, back at home, he had some vivosaurs he missed... and he had little orange-haired Dina too, "doll," as he sometimes called her. She was... basically a little sister to him..? Er a daughter er... Made perfect sense she was here. That the connections to her were easily sucked in.

But she was in a bad place, and Dino had run after her, and lives were all a flashing hodgepodge of blood and color and gore and feelings and confusion. Lots of confusion.

"We end it all with this."

From a pocket, she procured a small, stained-red hemp bag, and slowly motioned for, out of his pocket, to pull out the little plush of the stuffing-lacked cat.

"And now we find the others."

"How many?"

"Eight others."

"Got it." He silently counted in Yoshiki and filtered out any of his own "kids" as they... didn't count here. They could try all they wished, but their purpose so happened to be to _save_ , in a way, those eight. To get them all out of here alive; to solve the curse; to end it. They played no role in actually doing the curse-breaking. They were... guardians. Guardians the poor souls sorely needed.

And apparently, Joe had a bigger role to play. A much bigger role to play. He smiled softly at the feeling of Yui's hand against his, each of their other holding one of two items she assured him would end everything. Now all they needed were eight kids.

Yoshiki—alive, thank goodness—included as well.

 **Me: :D That's why she kept saying his name. Anyone remember when Joe saw Yui and then knocked out Yoshiki and got hit by the cloud stuff? Yeah, then. She was staring at him because she—she recognized him, even when Joe didn't recognize himself.**

 **So there you go.**

 **That's why this entire story happened in the first place. In an attempt to get all of those st00pid people who would break her curse to live already and actually break it, Sachiko procured someone who might be an aid. Then was like oh why not and chose a bunch of friends for him to take with him. Course, he doesn't know some of them (like Dino, Jkonna, those guys) but Dina did... well, no, she's an amnesiac, but she's related to them... so it's interesting... xD Sachiko seriously isn't picky.**

 **I guess you don't need me telling you everything about the story since you've been reading it, but I did anyways, ahaha... my bad. X3 Enjoy the story~ Two chapters left!  
**

 **What about Dino and his sister? I mean—Dina's his sister, wow! What kinda fire might that provoke... we'll see... We still have a Sachiko to pacify...**

 **Rupert: -sighs softly- Dina...**

 **Sachiko: -pouts-**

 **Dino: lITTLE GIRLS  
AHHHHHHHH -runs off-**


	14. She was Already Finished

**Rupert: ...truly, when do I see Dina again..?  
**

 **Me: That is an excellent question. I may have already killed her behind the scenes.**

 **Dino: .A. YOU'RE A BIG MEANIE -tackles me-**

 **Me: xwx It's just an alternate corpse party story maannn**

 **Dino: GIVE HER BACK. GIVE HER BACK.**

 **Jkonna: Well diga-don't I feel loved TTwTT**

 **Pauleen: BOYS -scoffs, turning away-**

 **Torn: scowls -RUPERT-**

 **Rupert: -sighs-**

 **Pauleen: uhh**

 **Rupert: Don't bother. Torn simply loathes me.**

Chapter Fourteen: She was Already Finished

Scuffing feet loping freely at a run over chipped woods in the formation of boots melted unto the chiming sound of click-clacking high-heel shoes that glimmered like amethysts. A single pair of voices sucked for breath, neither the most athletic person you've seen, and each just capping close enough to adulthood that childish energy had all but abandoned. Reconnected over dusty decades stacked as books on shelves and tottering unevenly with the extent of falling—so long ago it had been, that one of the two had become a new person over time and change—neither could believe the other had been located again, that they stood here, hand-in-hand, as they had as blunt teenagers when they both had shorter hair-lengths and lives as well.

They must've been a century older now. One quite literally; the other to the vaguest of levels, as where she'd been whittling away time for the past one hundred or so years didn't emit these changes brightly, but stored them only within the confines of the soul, like a remarkably untouched closet. If she the closet, then he the old, sun-stained, unreasonably large, warmly brown cowboy hat atop that guarded the closet of her soul and wore out into the beating heat for a long time before reunification could occur.

Thick, black-and-brown jacket followed underneath by a soft sugar-brown shirt, bent at odd angles and gently polka-dotted in elder blood stains from when he awoke here, and the time he'd spent trying to figure the impossible puzzle piecing out: pressed-hard-to-shining black jeans majorly covered by a pridefully-exhausted mid-colored brown boots adorned with neat layers of strings down to the boot and heel, where the foot, like a king, resided at the cushioned bottom. A red-shaded foot, as his skin mimicked that particular hue. Orange curls bounded down his face, a few specks as random bangs, the others lying down near his shoulders but nowhere quite there.

His companion wore a thin, pale pink jacket, in harsh comparison to his casual western wear. She shed an official light that gave her promising touches: the amethyst high-heels, rose blouse beneath, tight but hard-pressed navy blue skirt cutting off to her reasonably pale thighs. Shaking irritably out of sidelong spikes of brown bangs, her own hair so close, inches but eons from reaching those very tips of her small shoulders, Yui spoke softly, her original shock and enrapture of emotion caught into the current of the blood that would run if they didn't hurry.

"Do you have a clue where to go?"

Sweet, inviting coffee orbs peered back into the violet and gleamed.

"Mebbe."

She puffed air into his gently-red face. "So you don't."

"Purdy much."

Shyly, her eyes lingered on the walls, on their feet tapping in close unison to stretched thin floors of putrid oak wood a painful brown, on the sounds just out of their range that made clatters and suggested pursuers, friend or foe, she didn't know, even poising her pinched nose into the air as if the stench of ammonia, always there, always there, would lead them to some magical pot of safety. "Do you know where we should start looking?"

He laughed; it was a little sun-stained, like him. Orange curls bounced casually. His thick, oversized hat threatened to fall, black spots of eyes and a big, stretching maw the trademark object claiming his head. "Not really. Ya got a better idea, Yui?"

She shivered slightly; the way his lips uttered her name, _Yew-ee,_ sent her face into a clash of heat and feeling. "I had been searching for a girl when an earthquake occurred, I bumped my head, and woke. And after beginning my search for the ingredients that would end this—well, mostly keeping an eye out for survivors—I found the hemp bag, and I... found you..." Again, her eyes couldn't lift up to meet his. She wanted to curse herself; hadn't experienced this strange feeling for a long time and had no way of reacting right to it. She felt almost calculating, like she was trying to push him away of something.

"Hrmm..." He probably didn't notice. Tsukasa never noticed those things. His eye for detail pertained to moments of lighthearted joy, not frenzied things like problems, worries: those took their own path and eventually blew themselves out. She'd only ever seen that gently-reddened face pinch in concern for her once, and she'd been sobbing the hell out of herself, so that one had no right to count. Of course then he would.

Randomly, she mumbled, "Who else do you care this much about," and his hand burned hers where they held on.

"Hrmm? Who else do ah care about? Welp, there ain't much that can garner this heart's attention and mosey on in, I'll give ya that." A blunt Tsukasa response. Joe response... Something that only he would go and use. He'd never had that accent when they first met some lifetime ago; she somehow found it a little sweet. Tsukasa's first voice had been somewhat blunt, a little intruding. He now nearly spoke in metaphors and had this sun-grazed feel over him.

Somehow, still the same. "I care bout... well, I durno if she counts as a daughter or a li'l sister, but when I was in m'youth... well... yeah, I surpose it's round that time, I found this girl who's some two years old, and she was... interestin'. I durno how else to put it. I took care o' her though, before the accident happened a long time later."

"The accident..." It whistled through her lips like it would in an atrocious forest.

A shrug. "I durno what else to call it but the accident. It was... well, I didn't mean to do it, but then suddenly..." A hush fell upon him and the words frayed. "I guess it's somethin' ya wouldn't get. Ya don't know about them vivosaurs... they weren't part o' our... other life..? Would it be?"

"Aah..." Somewhat miffed—no, okay, she felt peeved at herself for not being able to understand something he did, Yui's gaze threatened to fall again and dig into soft wood flooring. It came back to her. "Oh!

"Aren't we running in circles—Tsuka—... Joe?"

What was she supposed to say to him?

Soon enough, the halls emptied of noise, all but their puttering of breath, hard and cold enough to let anyone see that running didn't suit this duo. Not at all. Proudly, Yui saw how much taller she'd come with adopting her high heels, and that the few inches she and Tsukasa had once rifted over had all but melted because she just so happened to have worn them and he never grew any taller.

"Oh. I rightly believe we have. Whoops."

Yui honestly couldn't tell if she found that cute or annoying. Should be a hindrance: real lives strung on a line being skewered by how much longer it took them to find and rescue the others as they began to recollect underneath the school building. But—but he—he—he was _Tsukasa!_ She couldn't believe herself; couldn't believe she had actually found this boy again. Mumbling under her breath, she coordinated with, "We might want to...

"to..."

Her breath died on the edges of her throat as a puffy yellow cushion wedged into the floor caught her eye. Fingers instinctively bit down on the reddish hand she found so much comfort in, practically squeezing through him, stabbing at him. Yui found a strange comfort in feeling that he'd stay here, though Tsukasa might not share that since her cherry nails were squeezing into his essence, but somehow it gave her a closeness that wrapped over her shoulders and stayed.

Her firm tightness made it impossible to realize that he'd begun squeezing the same power into her own fingers. To spite her or humor her or just because he was like that would never be answered; he did like feeling that connection though. Deliberated that squeezing at her so tightly made her seem a little less dainty: more present and pressed into his mind. Real. Dina didn't happen to be rightly real now—though he _knew_ she was there. Then, slowly, taking his sweet time, Joe's chocolate orbs rolled over and caught on the swatch of puffy yellow fabric sticking out of the bent floorboards.

"That doesn't belong there," he stated in that idiot way of is that caught in her throat and made her want to hug him or something.

"N-no..." One shaky breath at a time, she wore the barrier into his heart thin, her hand holding onto her every word unto his fingers. "It doesn't... belong there..."

One word rattled into the labyrinthine passages of all she had learned in her life, all of her lovely and unlovely experiences, the scary and the studying it took to net her into teaching, the bonding she had committed to unto those children—

One whose missing shoe stuck so unevenly right there, a broken foot in its own.

One word was all it took to furiously label that fluffy puff of fabric. One little girl's name, one whose icy blue eyes lit up under the shadow of warmth always with her who she never stopped clinging onto—big brother, big brother—whose teary face streamed and cried for him and never felt alright unless he'd show himself already. Yui had come in contact with the sadistically adorable face streaked in watercolors and paints of agony and need and love for that one single boy—and for the others too.

They all felt it.

How the hell was she supposed to react to _that foot-like thing? Sitting—sitting right—right there?_ Was she dead?—was she nearby?—w-was she okay—? Was Satoshi with her..? Ahh—the thought shot bloodcurdling images of the tall figure frozen in place, bent into a triangular position, dark pants bent at the angle, brown-haired head bowed down in its usual disheveled mess: forever. Front of a rose white shirt stained like its red counterpart. Shaking her head fearsomely, gruesomely, willing away old memories that had yet to repeat and scolding herself for losing it so easily, Yui realized her eyes had closed and reopened purple lids.

Which planted straight upon that controversial slipper and nearly sent an upheaval of misery in her pathway again. Giving a sidelong stare that grazed past an icy, pallid cheek, brown orbs checked up and sidled, reddish hands pulling the stony figure away and raising an arm to unplug her gaze from what wouldn't stop staring back in frenzied, ripped glances that shouted horror at her face. "Geez, Yui," he muttered softly in that sun-bleached, rolling tone, "somethin's been stirrin' yer thoughts riiiiiigh' up. Don' let that straw mix up yer chocolate milk, girl. Don' let it. Don'. _Don'._ " Petty, useless thoughts, somehow her eyes snapped and glazed over the just hardly taller boy in a thoughtful strike of pure wonder.

Trepidation and tension built unto each step leading back, back, back from what Yui continued to mutter under her lip as a horror scene, her cheeks worriedly painted white as if she'd seen a ghost—then again, they all had at some point. Icicles stuck through her bones, throttling shifts of ethereal coldness into the hand that guided her. Foggy, amethyst orbs peered on in a way that suggested she had seen far more than people should have been enabled to. Her body, hunkered down and shuddering freely, poked at its pink-and-blue outer shell like it made no difference. Sighing, tittering, Joe didn't durn know what to do with this pard of his. Pfft; more than a pard. Sorta. Yeah...

"EYYYAAAAAAGGGGCHHHHHH—"

Any handling he had on the frigid girl prior was naught but ashes. Thorns of swelling emotion rose up and stabbed at Joe's hands. He gripped because truly, out of everything in his sun-bright life, he had absolutely nothing better to do. Nothing that beat hoisting this life up from treacherous waters and therefore landing the dangers at bay, or at least not sucking at her neck-deep. An unconscious body writhed slightly, then shot forward, propelling Joe as well since he had considerable strength but this nail-biter had more than considerable strength and it tore through him and left metaphorical wounds spilling with the blood of ransom emptiness. Because he had nothing better to do, he jogged beside her; because he had nothing better to do, his hand gripped hers tightly even as it shirked and stabbed away; because there was nothing he would rather spend his life doing, his face bobbled real close until she was the sun and he the cloud tailing it, and their noses bumped once or twice like clumsy vivosaurs—Torn and Trikko, he smiled wistfully; their corpses, like shadowy tears in memory, shone like bloody day in his eye—and her breath fell hot and warm on his cheek. Which was pretty fantastic, in his point of view.

Guttural snorts and squeals became their new road, their new map to a sort of crowned victory where perchance the noises would enforce pattern, and pattern would produce sense, and maybe sense could reveal some special faces.

Whatever had happened when the black admixture collided with flesh and fed on him, whatever might of dissected his sense of self into corners of people until he could see everything, feel everything, be everywhere and experience it all, and know: whatever it did, it wasn't normal, and it was also gone. Finding a dusty shard of himself had solved a puzzle he had no ability to secure. And then, of course, there was this girl he had nasty holes in his heart for that only she'd fill, which felt weird and confusing and made him wonder what had happened to the corks that stopped those things up. A rueful shake of the head and the thoughts wouldn't nicely pack into the box in the back of his head, but it was a start. Joe wasn't very used to this; he loved every moment of it.

Flustered hands led the girl gently from smacking a porcelain head into pointy shreds of glass glued into strangely boarded-shut windows. Winds whistled eerie tunes that sung petty music, offered petty hope. Joe nearly stepped on top of a brown-haired corpse when it gave out a spasm and he realized no, he had nearly stepped on a very living body. Warily, brown orbs poked out from under his hat's massive brim and winked. "Howdy, pard."

Of course, it happened to have been stuffed inside of a chip in the ground, waves of blue dress in tatters about it and hair sticking wildly. Like an afterthought, this shining, plastic-pink headband had shattered to the side and sat there unmoving. Puling in the most adorably pathetic state, its icy blue orbs stared in a state of brokenness. "Saaatooshiiiii..." the tiny female squeaked. "Saaaaaaaaa _aaa_ too _oooo_ sshhhiii _iii..._ "

The bounding panda face on Yui's necklace yanked as her body tumbled to the ground and caught the tiny female in an embrace, gently rubbing circles into her blue-cloaked back, whispering words to her that didn't quite catch in the pard's impaired hearing. He didn't focus on what shoved him out like an emotionally private conversation, with the females chattering about males and emotions and the color pink coating areas like one's cheeks or such. He swore he heard his old name once or twice; that bloodless nail poked in his general direction avidly and man, it unraveled untold emotions of embarrassment. Although Joe couldn't feel embarrassed about his current situation with the girl chattering all over him. More just scrunched by the whole thing about short brunette Yui mentioning him all this time. Felt a nip of pride, but mostly flustered and awkward.

Not really sure where his role was supposed to go, Joe gathered up that tiny plastic pink headband and plopped it on the little girl's head, patting a mystifying, choppy color of hair rather wondrously. His wide, warm orbs stared somewhat transfixed at the browning texture hinted with shades of violet. Felt like he'd seen it before—yes, he had. Seen a lot of these things before. A lot of these people before—

That tiny girl's frame, perched in front of a lubricant red mass. Her single shadow flecked out in this specific _coil_ of shadow, the only thing metaphorically cutting Torn's body directly in half. The rest of the flayed-scales appearance was only halfway peeled. An apple, showing off its vitamins and minerals.

A hard swallow.

 _BOOMMmmmpf!_

Frantic footsteps veered through Joe's blind spot and took him on a trip into the hallway's wall, where his hat crumpled into a floorboard drifting around to the side and his bones made the crunch of tired despair, allowing him to see that he was tired. Though he didn't need physical injury to show that tidbit off. Worried orbs, brown like his but cooler, softer, older chocolate chip cookies than Joe's, cascaded into his and stole the thick, ridiculously huge hat from its shelf, awkwardly patting it at his head. A red face peered into Joe's naturally tinted.

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry! Ahhh, God, I'm such a clutz, aren't I! I'm so sorry; ohhh my gosh I'm so, so sorry!" Frantically he batted for the brown face in the hat and nearly tore a hole through it; the face bloomed redder. Harsher. "Ahhhhhhh... ahh, ahhh, ahhh, I'm sorry!"

"Durn, pard," murmured the pard himself softly, "calm yer feathery soul. I ain't gonna tie up yer tail in a knot, boy." Again reminded in a grayed flash of that thing that had tried to take him over, where he had seen everything, this specimen came to mind.

A tunnel-like entrance, led away from the dark by a creaky door peeled outwards and portraying the light to hit his face.

Yeah, that thing. Nodding somewhat, recognizing the boy didn't have a heckova clue who his eyes punctured through, the pard did the honors. "M'name's Joe Wildwest."

Subdued, the teen bobbled his head harshly. "Y-Yeah. Mochida... Satoshi. Pleasure's m-mine." A cool tone lied underneath the heat of the moment, steering Satoshi's pressured voice into the shorter pard. He sighed at the presence of another male younger but taller than him. Supposed there wasn't much he could do about it. A new confidence led in the knee-length boots of Joe as his orange curls bounced and his jacket shivered around his body, leading this other teen with his eyes toward his other pals in the thought that they may register something.

"AH! YUKA! I'm so sorry—I looked everywhere for some way to f-free you..." Head hanging, cheeks blaring, the boy fell to his knees, which the red-toned pard soon saw to be radically crusted by ruby-like claws of torture. His forearms held similar markings. Giggling softly and releasing via the realization that a face he seemed to have been without for some time had found his—purple orbs, longer hair: all spelled out to Yui—his arms draped across the little female in the torn, blue dress and the less severe shivers, as both able bodies guided and maneuvered the dress and the bruised, pale legs up and outward.

Tossing her head back, Yui's eyes shone with a new layer of pride. "Tsukaaasaaaa!" she called, "I doubt we could fish her out on our own!"

So to the desires of someone he felt a tugging, tangible need to, the largest hands out of the three pairs sifted and dug into the trapped girl's warm body, twisting it gently through turns that the others pertained blind spots to, allowing himself an opening to watch and grin steadily to the sight of two more souls Yui apparently recognized and held dear to herself being rescued from the tumulus terror feeding into their veins.

Quietly, the sunny man coughed, and a cloud of darkness streamed through his lips.

...Still there, was it...

With the bottomless black came a flash, a bright hook of memory pecking at his skull. Wincing softly, Joe rolled his clenched orbs and struggled to ignore the thing for now. Tics in his head had to subside until this li'l girlie—Yuka, wasn't it—had she and her rainbow-bruised legs and her tatters of a dress snagged and safely pulled out of the unseen clutches of sharp entities below. Seemed lucky not a single pale toe had been lopped off by the gleaming mechanism down below in the sea of blackness. The further Yuka disentangled from coils of darkening demise, the more she resembled taffy being pulled apart at the seams. Only these seams durn well knew how to release themselves, sought out and recognized a gleam of defeat, like a lone star twinkling in the night sky.

Curiously, warm orbs flickered out past a sheet of icy glass and into the murky shadows of forests and branches swabbed out like weapons. Above lazily sat smoky clouds that entwined and snared so layered and crisscrossed that not a spark of light drew through. How funky. And disappointing. A funky disappointment; some freak of nature. A disappointing freak of nature.

When angular bones dressed in graying skin coated his eyes, he looked away and quickly hoisted the tiny, weightless girl unto his shoulder, her dress spilling and whistling around his upper-body and knotting over his purposely huge black-and-brown jacket. "Paard," he moaned softly.

Little Yuka, still shoeless, rescued in the arms of the strongest one there; Yui's amethyst gaze trickled out and touched with her brunette friend she'd known for a long time. In the most sensible of ways, not as long as the orange-haired male fidgeting over tears of dress that slapped and shrouded upon him, muttering sounds of regret or assistance needed every minute or so. Not so long as she has known Tsukasa.

"Satoshi..." she called in some sort of unwrapped greeting, when catching his cooler brown gaze reflected her to the sight of Yuka and she deliberated there wouldn't be much of a way she could get him to look away. Arms stretched out in some form of how much he wanted to yank her away, Yui's sunny-pale face brightened at the sight of that silly boy. Relief washed warm and bubbly upon her that he still had found his little sister, still had managed to keep enough of an eye on her that she hadn't been lost again. Curiously... she wondered... if he, too, had found help in a peculiar individual he'd never seen prior. Like the others. Tsukasa had been muttering about others, too... she'd heard it especially when she first saw him and that explosion of darkness and a blonde male in black trim—Yoshiki, whom else cursed that much about his life being saved?—and the silence that pursued.

Seeing him... recognizing him... searching, searching, searching for a way to reunite with him, in the vain artificial flicker of hope that perhaps he was who he ought to be.

It was... funny... As quick-minded and selfless, she sacrificed her life to these dear people accordingly and as soon as she might need to in order for their own lives to be preserved. Sending her into a lifeless pulp but preventing anyone else from taking her place had been a necessity in her soul, a throbbing in her heart to commit. And it always happened. So she had never seen a diverse set of the once-students of the school she once taught because she always ended up crumpled on the floor, _dead._ And yet, through her plights of rescue and safety and enforcing any and all plans she could to preserve life, she never found herself so prime to actually try continuing her own life prior. Never plugged into the calls of the children, never listened, just acted and saved, never let them die for her—no, no. This was... her own job. A sort of distraction.

It brought back memories of her as a student herself inside of her own school late after the final bell had sung, and the spirits of those left behind grew restless, dreary, until she could hear them as clear as another classmate and see through their ghastly figures. Orange-haired and young Tsukasa had, no charm in hand, gone to idiotic lengths to protect her that time. Peering indefinitely toward the now-grown man, his face shadowed by his ridiculously gigantic hat, furry-brown with darker cuts that could make eyes and perhaps a jagged mouth, even, although it somehow looked cuddly all the same, she could catch sight of a male she hadn't seen in well over a century glancing back at her, still mottled by the incredulous task of Yuka's dress.

Satoshi's hands had already pressed in and untangled a majority of the knots, quickly patting down any remaining tears and yanking out any problematic strands, plucking Yuka like a flower and hugging the tiny girl close to him as soon as humanely possible and whispering about how unsure he felt over letting go again.

Joe snorted softly, his gentler though raspy, sunny tone pressing outward. "Ya remind me... of Rupert, a li'l. And Dina'd be Yuka... Hah..." His eyes glazed somewhat, a light texture unsettling the warmth of the consistent brown. "I trust they're hangin' in tight. 'n together, like we'll are here..." Subdued, slightly anxious, huggable and lonely, like a discarded teddy, Joe's orbs gently rolled from one side of the stretched halls to the other, every last speck of light from the semi-darkness setting upon him. He coughed and a hand instinctively covered, balling up a fist as if it'd collected something and furling both hands behind his back. His reddish face lifted upward and peered at the floorboards in the ceiling, particularly a scratchy hole or two.

She couldn't help it; her body collapsed and she squeezed her pale arms tight around his figure. Her amethyst shoes pinched and nearly tottered as she leaned into Joe and sighed softly. Didn't like seeing him look so patched, so defeated.

"Er... Yui... I think ah need t'go lookin' round... jus' a stroll, jus' in case... I c'n look fer yer kid-friends too, as I look for mine, jus' in case..." His hands, warm on her spine, asked to let him go for a little while and check things out. "Ya... watch o'er Satoshi 'n li'l Yuka... poor dolls look ready t'snap. Prolly should figure a safe place ter go soon er somethin'...

"And I need to find 'em meself. Er at least try."

Of course. Of course he had to do this to her. He was still Tsukasa. He still needed his moments to go searching out on his own for those things of his—though... she supposed it made sense. Loathed the thought down to the end of her tired emotions, but she supposed it made sense. How would she feel, had Satoshi and Yuka actually been these... Dina and Rupert fellows, and she struggled to make sense of the turmoil surmounting her that she'd never seen before in her life, as well as realizing she had been someone _before_ Shishido Yui and she had been in love with someone she had only just remembered because they had been trapped in this damn school for how long—

Oh, oh, oh... Go easy on Joe, she decided quickly.

Eyes drawn level with the window outdoors, knock-knock-knocked by ghostly hands filled of raindrops and made by moisture and icy chills that somehow hadn't turned the droplets to blooming and pacifying snow. Always rain. Always thunder and lightning, and always the losing-texture numbing sense that gave cold an altogether new meaning, and never, never snow.

As she tentatively stepped back and flourished her hands, drawing herself parallel with Satoshi and the sniveling girl in his loving arms, her own grasp now devoid of such warmth, she watched as Tsukasa gave a small tip of his cowboy hat and sauntered on, his boots going _clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp_ as he grew further distant and further swallowed up by the school. He coughed sometimes; then she couldn't hear him any longer.

"Come on," she murmured in her airy tone lanced with purpose, plucking fingers over Satoshi's forearm and dragging his strangely marred limb forward with her, further ensuing the boy who owned the arm and the girl held by the other arm, "we... have a problem to figure out."

In her free arm, squeezed regularly in some failing form to relieve stress, laid a small cloth sack just larger than her palm, stained with the old tang of blood and filled with a thing that squished and squished.

Perhaps the others knew where to go, too. And if not, they would find them.

Each footprint confined into the wood of the school sent his headache pecking harder and harder, at first via the bill of some small toe-biter of a vivosaur like a purple and thin nasaur, though that had far bypassed a mere snitch like that and had evolved into the length and prowess of yellow feathers and a thick maw of a beak that must've been layered in waves of callous. More a ptera than a nasaur. Much more a ptera. Durn, pteras hurt.

Jacket giving a blank shuffling sound as he moved and the stray breezes of Heavenly Host tore holes though his pecks, tossing his eyes over the various rubbish dressing rotted and wooden floorboards heavy in the amount of footsteps that had smacked over them for the past century or so. Like an ingenious rascal that ducked out of the sight of authority, flicking semi-darkness and untold stenches of that putrid, metallic ammonia crawled up his skull's interior and mingled there, just minglin' there. Didn't help much that he'd gone and coughed his throat raw as he went on his half-unlit way. Not half full, half empty: half gone. Just—just _gone._ Disturbin', sure, and disappointin', too, but mostly delirious with the thought.

Alone. Joe'd gotten himself hankered down in a corner on the dusty ruts of fate, and whatever felt like snippin' his head off could come round and do so any moment it felt like durn doin' it. Gave mortality this glossy new shine and flecked at him, built up in him. Anxious worry gnawed up and down a muscle or two, and the knocking sensation of peck, peck, pecking returned in a new volley of disgust and rotting pain. He squinted and caught flashes of black and white and mist that brandished slowly off his lips and disappeared into the agony ahead and behind. Even as the worst of it stamped pain where it stamped pain in a luscious sort of sebum, Joe screwed up coffee orbs filled with the steam of warmth they always had, and he understood that he had important business to take care of, and now that this possessive sorta mist—darkenin' in the midst of it, drowning in shadows and bedazzled in poisonous rubies like blood—this mixture stopped minglin' with his body, it started to feel better.

In the cause of a long chase scene of a tale, the pard himself had been once subjected to possession, for multiple, disgusting years, knowin' that something was inside of his body and that it had absolutely taken 'im over, and he had had no hope. Somehow, this sorta possession was different—didn't disconnect him with his flesh, just rotted in this angst of catharsis and felt purdy filthy on its own—but at the same time it had its own central point and had taken over, and had seen it all. So much power: creepy power, bad power, yucky power that took away his right as the living too. Made him feel violated.

Each breath tore out another hunk of black scum. Least, felt like that. Because possessive black scum'd been a part of him at some moment. Freakin' messed up creepy. Gritting his teeth gently, so as not to disturb his suddenly tender body, the semi-authoritative adult stared through the brim of his lucky and huge hat, past any stray orange curls of bangs playfully smacking against reddish forehead, and peered, through the shadows his life had become, at a golden orb. Small—almost impossibly miniscule. His foremost thought of golden had reverberated into the red-scaled sight of Torn, and enough red surrounded it, but no scales, and that eye happened to be way smaller than it looked at first.

A premonition like no other chilled into Joe's bones as he gently placed one boot in front of the other, a whole new purpose arranged for each foot and its conquest to whatever sort of gain he'd achieve by examining this thing he didn't want to be true furthermore, but he did, and peering up through the creaky hallway, having lost sight of the infirmary it had once been shelled into, like a nut, now its innards gleamed almost cheerfully red through cobwebs of strings of red, red, red. Pieces of white, even fleshy pale colors and those thoroughly dissected eyeballs shimmered all over and procured an eerie amount of light.

He stood there beneath the shower of color and fluid and a mystifying lightness that made him nearly feel safe under the arcing arms of this creature's death. The word _selfish_ sprouted on his lips before he knew what was going on, and it dawned on him.

That smudge thing in the infirmary.

Ohhh, right, that thing...

Only furthered the pain that severed through Joe's new clean-cut punch into his heart's shell, a new rock that bowled into his barrier and threatened to lop it right off. The man he was, it didn't have to do with the Rupert himself that caused this newfangled pain: the result it would have on the one closest to him, that was what's gonna wreck his life. Joe had few people truly close to him, but that little doll... Gently pressing his head side to side to side, the pard moved onward in his methodical motion, continually on alert for other things he had to search for and recover, was it possible, and as well figure why the school had lost its original composure, and why its floor had gone so bloodstained red on its own, why it rumbled as it about to twist apart, why it felt like the cogs had dramatically shifted and everything was about to seriously mess up.

Worriedly his hand fished through a pocket and softly patted the head of the disemboweled plush kitty, its innards of fluff severely torn out like Torn himself had used it as some freakin' chew toy, that messed up vivosaur, him. Tossing back his head and catching a glimpse of fangs just beside his cheek, the man rather garnered he'd found what he'd been searching for. Just on the crook of a rewashed stairwell stinking some foul odor like no tomorrow, resting on his twisted legs like a sleeping corpse, lay the remains of the dimetro himself. His sail, drenched in a liquid the pard refused to name, flapped piteously in the wind. Did corpses allow pity upon their creepy-lookin' selves? Well, too bad, Torn. He got some.

In the gentle gait under the steps and past rickety openings, the whole of the school looked like it'd been tipsy-turvy gone inside-out. Splatters of random red and black didn't help matters all that much. Nor the insightful glimpses of translucent cyan entities clutching to hold their fallen body parts in singular unison that suggested they had something they had not had earlier, and no way of replenishing its pieces without either looking stupid or realizing they had no way of patching themselves up in the first place. A tuckered sigh, and, poor tots. Somehow managed to withhold a light in their eyes. Didn't right now how, but they did. Looked pleasant enough.

Maybe the deceased of his own had solved this little dilemma, too. Joe could downright imagine white-haired regal— _dead—_ Rupert sifting with the monsters that caused the cogs of the nexus to spin and sittin' down with them, serving some spots of tea, and gettin' their unholy bums to give up on the act as they could potentially harm Dina, and anything potentially harming li'l Dina was Rupert's worst enemy. So that made sense.

Or maybe some of the poor suckers killed by the spirits themselves decided hey, might as well calm them down so that other friends still alive don't suffer our fates too. He could see Torn doing that. Also ridiculously overprotective of the orange-haired girl, he'd do that to his own murderers. Yeah he would. Unless some other entity had caused this pain of his. Ergh, creepy. The pard shuddered somewhat, then moved on accordingly. A long strand of fiery hair fell tattered from the ceiling and brushed over him, but he had no time to look up. Anyway, didn't really have anyone to associate that had this kinda hair. He discarded and went on, untimely squishing a poor pinky corpse as he did, but he didn't stop for that either.

Suddenly, his single worry had all bloomed into one blooming flower of life, and it had to do with that doll of a girl, Dina, about whether or not she was okay. Well, of course she had problems. Rupert was dead—maybe she didn't know, and she felt absolutely fantastic as it could get? Okay, that was a yellow-bellied lie and Joe knew it.

After some time of bumbling and moving, he began to tire and the corpses only blurred. Movement had sorta ended up a failure and his head ached like a rock was splitting it wide open. Or maybe the intense worry about his li'l Dina had done that. Yeah, maybe. Shrugging deftly, he couldn't help but worry morosely and think up on it. Pledge that she hadn't been harmed in any way, someone looked out for her, somewhere, even with both Rupert and Torn dead—hey! Trikko!—and he'd well and soon find that pard and be done with it.

Purpose soon derailed to delirium and no matter how hard Joe scrounged or how many times he bumped his head or how long it'd been since he'd felt anything but dead body squishing underfoot, darkness had permeated his vision, one that wouldn't scratch out of his eyes or anything similar to that, and he had no way of finding her, whether Dina stood near or not. Fruitless. Fruitless, they'd all say, and drag him away, if he could even manage to see that.

Eventually he would stumble like a mindless creature that had been fully taken over by the darkening and look fully in control of the school, no matter how mindless or not his brain actually stood and nodded for, and other eyes would see his deadened ones and stagger back. A pair of females, one cloaked in the same jacket the man had pressed round his body, would fumble for excuses and quickly totter for a door just out of his sleepy reach that would take them underground into the bowels of the nexus and chill their hearts if it tried mercilessly enough. Another pair, one male and the other female, would peer at him incredulously as he appeared out of nowhere by the stairs, and the girl would shriek as Joe stepped on top of an old corpse of this other boy who was tall and psychotic and all of that girl's screaming would send the sightless boy down a hole and he would land, with a fump, underground, on top of a hundredsomethinglong corpse of brown that technically saved his life, and she would follow. A little girl and an older boy would, strung tight and close, find their own way away when their adult leader pushed them out and said she had some searching of her own to quickly complete, hemp bag in hand. And finally, only catching minor glimpses as they chased the girl in red, another girl and boy would eventually meet this man, and perhaps they would understand what he was going through.

No one could save this wandering man they hardly knew. They wished for him but they were all too focused on their own impending tasks that would plunge them beneath the earth and let them recognize other faces, and allow for missing holes to be re-patched. It would be okay. Somewhere unconsciously the man would smile.

Not until the calling of one of the cyan ones would he be stirred, a tiny one in pigtails whose eye had once been missing until refilled by maybe the cyan boy beside her, who stared in dead golden orbs at a man still very alive. He would leave, but she would stay, and her mismatched, centuries-patched friends would join her, and they would lead him somewhere safe, because they wanted to help as much as they could, now that their eyes had been fixed all over again.

If Joe had searched a little harder, he may have found what he was looking for.

Although that entire ordeal would still be just off the chip of impossible as she had found herself into an altogether new space entirely, one that was not red but very cold, and very dark.

Instead, someone else found her.

It started in an explosion of gray movement and voice, this kid all yell and no bite chasing himself around and around the same lonely corridors, slate orbs overflowing in the presence of black color chipped down to his core that pretended to rot. A single word floated and shoved out of his lips, and he flailed through the sky like a wounded bird in search of the one he so desperately needed to reclaim as his own, would she just find him already. "DIIIIINAAAA! H-hEY! DINAAAA!" All yell; no bite. Bruises scattered down olive skin and spikes of gray hair shadowed random sections of an angular face. Frantic movements and agonized screeching suggested how important the boy felt this might be. "DINAAAA," he called, hand sticking through a shot of glass in the wall that rung and sliced through him, just about to slide off a finger or two but ultimately failing for now.

He muttered about a sister of his under his breath, about how much he missed her, how much he needed to reclaim her, how much he needed to drag her back into reality so they could reunite and go home together. Personally, they hadn't actually been reunited for years, so it might come out as a little shock, but she'd be happy, he knew it. Dina would be happy, the sister of his he kept running for. A sister that he knew would be so, so happy to see him and feel so, so blessed to be by his side once more, and it would be so great. Oh yeah it would. See, unlike some pitiful and weirdo siblings, he and she super got along. Well, again, it'd been awhile—okay, a really long while—as in seventeen years a long while—since they'd actually met again, but hey, twin siblings were twin siblings, and he'd always love Dina. Plus, they hadn't separated because they wanted to. Long embarrassing story. But they loved like the best siblings ever and it was so great and they were so close to being together again and the boy planned it would happen.

Wishing in his heart of all hearts that this was gonna actually happen instead of any other crummy idea he had stored there, the boy raised his slate orbs and cried: "IT'S ME, DINO!" waiting, trusting, pleading that she'd answer and she'd be so, so super happy like him, and they could hug and stuff, and again, it'd be great. Because Dino knew these things. He might've fretted about his best friend, but heck, she could take care of herself, right, and Dina was of all significance. Dina had taken the stage—no, she hadn't, she'd burned it down so bad because he had to find that orange-haired girl with the silver highlights and the really pale face of hers. Just enough memories to coil around his head and draw him nearer through the corridors, until it became evident that he was running through uncharted territory.

Turn a bend, round a corner, and in all of its beauty and effulgence plus the dyes of the school, or whatever the reason it was so old and freakin' red and black and almost dead-looking but that was crazy: rows of creaky chairs with a literal, gilded stage at the end sat. Auditorium, that was the word. On a nearby sign, written in what Dino considered to be perfect calligraphy, there his not-so-lexicographer gaze spat upon the writing of **Auditorium** again and again and again. Like some pretty princess at the end of the rose bushes, here the brother would find the sister and sweep her off her feet and take her away from this messy landscape.

Shadows jutted out in strange angles. Beneath specific chairs the stench and given texture of burnt velvet, if his eyes only looked a little closer and stopped their stubborn rebuttal, they would find polished-white, unnaturally white bones scattered about. The current row he labored past, if he only stopped staring aimlessly and actually looked, had multiple dried skulls stabbed into the armrests of the first chairs. Right there, and Dino saw nothing. Nothing at all. Just the envisioning of what his baby twin sister looked like now that she had grown up just as much as he, trying to guess if she'd gotten as tall as him or was adorably tiny. Prolly the latter. She seemed like a short kinda person.

The blue and red flickering flames of ghosts hoarded along the sidelines in retrospect of what sort of horror might overcome the innocence of this poor pure boy, as morale as the bones beneath the seats were white. Some crowded along the booth of a bench provided in front of the stationary sleek-black piano spotted with red hand-prints, always the red hand-prints, and began to gently poke and prod the keys into a soft, mournful tune. It had become almost a show for them, and the hollering creatures of fire on each side spurted and heatedly slammed against each other, the walls, and the seats at the end of each row.

So blind that he didn't even see it, Dino steadily pushed to the front of the stage and then climbed the three, sanded-wooden steps.

 _TONK._ A bell-like silence resonated in the chamber devoid of life.  
 _TONK._ The piano, crammed of talented, dead musicians, forced all of their deathly essence into a final key that flew out the door.  
 _TONK._ An unearthly creature nosed its bleached-red nose and front of its—her—face past an expired curtain.

Bare feet softly scuffed over dust and grime, buildup over decades almost completely wiped clean off before the boy had arrived. Stalled by the school until the perfect moment to enter. Now, as she lumbered in a slow, timely manner, thin body thoroughly coated in a sheen of soft, shimmery, slimy red, but otherwise come as clean as she could, she left a slithering line of the liquid following behind her from the downpour of where she had started. Her fingerprints matched with those along the thick curtain now, somehow held together and made as wavy and luscious as it could with its fray entirety.

And he was blind to all of this, as the piano rose and rose with the gaining trepidation and the foot-stepping of the girl coming toward him and piercing via orbs that had been scarred in a scarlet red that still, to him, looked delicate and brown. A sweet, soft smile gently spread across his face, and his body swooned with a warmth that only he would know, as she had lost all feeling some time ago in the dark of night. She had lost all that she was in that time ago in the swaths of night. The piano rose as her eyes did, up and up until they connected and pierced through her brother.

Not her brother; she saw none of it: her latest victim.

Not that she even knew what she was doing anymore.

One tiny finger rose one at a time in excruciatingly slow, slumbering silence, numb and swift and soon resting just below the neck of the boy, playing with his collarbone, twisting and touching it. The lubricant twist of sweat and sebum gathered among her blood-dyed pads and she giggled very softly, and Dino couldn't help but grin wider and giggle back.

He just saw his sister. His sweet little sister.

How he loved his sister.

His own hand rose in taking of the intention to gently embrace his dear sister. Her own hand rose and cut off half of his fingers. Five little digits swung in a red-spewing arc and plopped pathetically on the sanded floor, five little stains of red that few ghosts swooped in and swarmed, tossing their faces into the recoiling stench and struggling to touch the stemmed bit of life. None succeeded, but none stopped trying. Blue and red mingled by the touches of purple in their knotted toiling.

The boy let his hand sink to his side, his eyes choking with tears. Happy tears. Beautiful tears. Incredulous tears, that he had found his sweet sister again, all memories of whatever that hand of his was supposed to do ditched.

Slamming, practically exploding against the piano, purple fingers entwined and in sync performed the symphony in earsplitting volume that everyone but the living would hear, because the living was blinded by all sides for the overwhelming love he contained for that sister of his, a love she may have shared if she even knew who she was. Her fingers, resting against his collarbone, squirmed about slightly, gently using primed and perfected nails to scoop into a single hole at the tip, as if searching for something. Scarred eyes scrutinized him. Dino could feel their glow cast upon his figure, not the dripping fluid that secreted because of what he didn't see. Which, unfortunately, was everything.

Any chills that should have splashed down his spine were nonexistent. The welling of blood and sickening, slick red down his arm and missing fingertips was nonexistent, and so was the quickly, exponentially expanding hole that had started in his collarbone and now peeled down near his belly button. Apparently bored of that specific area, his sister slammed her other hand into the roots of his forehead and crossed in gentle X marks here and there, incredibly specific about where to cut into his brain. Her other hand quickly rose and snapped off the first digits in his other hand because he looked uneven and it felt wrong.

She liked that idea. Ending her current task, leaving a red dot of blood to well in a nail as she dug just the slightest into the perfect X, cutting little lines through wherever she found flawed, impeccable speed wriggled and snared her fingers into bits of pieces betwixt muscle and bone where they rubbed against one another giddily, she cut and hollowed the little parts out and sliced through them, going from arm to arm and lowering down to the very edges of his thighs, and severing just to bone where his legs should pop off. She was a whole new level of serial measurements. It had to be perfect; this was a show orchestrated for the dead to see, and it had to all be perfect. Puppet-like, hollow eyes sought for the approval that lapped at her in overflowing sync and she nodded gently at that, and she continued with her cutting.

The mottling glob of ghosts raising hands and fingers in tossed motions, mostly entwined by the permeating purple presence, pressed gentler on the keys into a winding staircase of motions that speared cold rushes into the flesh of the dead who could feel the sense of loss tangled deep within the groves of the music. Deaf to the world but of the silence his sister gave off that he mistook for happy, priceless laughter, the boy didn't feel the pressure building up inside of him or the tears that interconnected in a series of fault lines and earthquakes splitting across his olive-colored body and saturating his gray shirt in a stench of metallic life going stale. He was iron left out in the sun and wind for too long, and rust overtook the edges as did the breath of the mindless female coursing the life out of him. She was still alive, as far as anyone could tell. She could breathe. She had moving flesh in an uncountable series of layers over her soul.

The music reached into the clutches of the climax as the girl took a dodge back and scrutinized her work. It had to be perfect. It had to be beautiful. His remains would paint these walls, this room that furthermore had nigh never been used, and they would welcome those who would be spirited away in future installments, as it always went. Music thundered all around and lightning zapped betwixt her sightless orbs as a fingernail lifted, speed all forgotten in her dance of a kill, and she gently moved forward in a slithering fashion that spent more time than her taking aback did.

All around them the sanded flooring of precious wood was rotting already by the leaky pools of blood each sibling let off. One had never bled on their own for a long time; the other, reduced to pieces, now. Soon only one would remain, the other recycled into decorations to adorn the walls and welcome lost souls into the filthy rue of the auditorium, where they would each meet their marred end and others would watch the show, and feel the fire in their eyes, the dance that captivated them, the music roaring, the crowd of the dead cheering and locking their gaze upon hers and almost staring with a tense of control, a strange and powerful connection existing between them:

and it all rose in the glory of that single red-dyed finger, like a whitewashed sunset about to approach and enlist the end upon the one in front of her. With no much as a mock twisting her cheeks, body blank of emotion but for that jutting finger, filled with the thoughts and the vileness and the pain—the loss of one single thing that had taken her this far and completely annihilated all that had once been a shy, little girl by the name of Dina, the finger inched closer.

And when everyone thought it would take another eon to end it:  
 _Swoooooosh~_

It dipped right into the boy and should have silenced the entire gruesome chamber as a gentle hush sucked all life from what should have been a dying male.

Only until the permeating presence of cyan swooped and snagged at the female, gently caressing the mutilated eyes with his own and softly showering her bloodied face in kisses.

The piano fell with a cacophonous _SHRRRUUKK—_ sending spirits of all kinds howling, shrieking, sobbing, traipsing and flooding for every possible exit imaginable, the scene of purple and death lost as the boy stood upright and stared at his unmarked body, and at the red and blue in front of his own eyes.

"A-aah..." He fell back limply, gray feet and bottom smacking against the sanded wood as Dina's body shook in a massive array of convulsions and sprouted thick lines of red that crumpled up over her temple down to the dip in where her belly button should have been and her limbs tore apart, all beneath a pristine red coat lined in navy blue that had once dominated her body.

A shower of her body flung to cover and swoon upon all surfaces, thoroughly coating what had been her brother in shock and an extreme amount of red fluid as only the cyan soul was left behind, collapsed in a tiny fold, sobbing into the arms of the other, who continued to caress and kiss her through the silent, ghostly tears.

Dino, overtook in the clutch of emotion, fell backward and stared at the ceiling, his spine crested over a filthy carpet, entire front of his body caked in a sort of red, and his entire life wreaked to shambles in front of him. Because it was all he had left, he silently wondered what had become of himself, and if that one man he had seen—Joe—was okay. He lost sight of himself under the gentle coating of his lovely sister and the one she most loved in their dead, dead embrace, and he also wondered if that would be him soon, if he would be dead as well.

 **Rupert: ah...**

 **Droplet: -...-**

 **Me: Yeah I know.**

 **Rupert: D-Dina...**

 **Droplet: -H-holy t-turd... D-di...no...-**

 **Me: Both had their eyes full of tears.**

 **Both: -currently crying-**

 **And then they had a big hug and shared for their loss—**

 **Rupert: not quite**

 **Droplet: -nope-**

 **(The next chapter is the finale! Wow, almost there! Random afterthought, it'll take a liiittle longer than just one week (two) because my next weekend is crazy, but... it's coming. Oh boy. I have chills. Woop.)**


	15. He was Durn Ready

**Dina: W-we have... c-come a long way...**

 **Rupert: It ends soon... -sighs softly, hugging her tighter to him-**

 **Me: dawwww**

 **Dino: MAN I CAN'T WAIT UNTIL IT'S OVER**

 **Rupert: -_- I see you have come a long way as well.**

 **Jkonna: WHEW, I'M BEAT!**

 **Dino: Dude, you had like one scene.**

 **Jkonna: WELL STILL MAN**

 **Dino: NO**

 **Me: okay let's get this over with**

Chapter Fifteen: He was Durn Ready

What first told the sightless bluenette he had no right to be alive at this moment was the hard crush of rough but solid, versatile texture the coppery creamy color of pennies digging into his body as he fell, _whump_ , into the beast. A second valid indicator proved to be how limp—lifeless. How lifeless this thick, monstrous body had come to. Not a beat of warmth stroked his legs, bent at awkward angles after his unfortunate fall via his seeing guide. After confirming this sauropod to be both harmless, unmoving, and overall safe, his misty green orbs and head tipped back to call for the girl that had caused him to be sent shooting through what had to be leagues of air ride until his smack on solid skin. Solid dead skin. The whole... thought of death—after everything—gave him chills which poked down his spine abruptly. His face screwed up and he inadvertently reached at an eye, only to recall that Naomi had broken his glasses, and that was why the body beneath him looked so flat and fuzzy. Not fur—had to be... smooth, hide-like—scales. Scales. What was this creature?

Upon confirmation that she hadn't accidentally killed her dear friend, Naomi's withheld breaths spilled out in one blow, and her stomach cramped beneath the thin layer of yellow fabric now budding in sweat. Icy sweat. Worried sweat that ticked down her fairly pale skin and gathered at lumpy parts of her body where it could. Wincing softly, she supposed she deserved it for sending poor sightless Shige-nii—which was also her fault—reeling in the first place. Guiltily, her throat caught up in moisture and something pinched her as if to pule out a sob, but the black-donned figure, ghostly-light-skinned head propped up back at her, had no time for tears, as shown in his gaze, so she jumped.

No she didn't jump. Idiotically, swallowing fearfully, tears leaking from her wounded gaze and dragging down limp cheeks, slapping against whatever that boy had landed on below, Naomi couldn't. She—she couldn't. She'd die, grumbled intuition, but go ahead, if you want. The heart-seizing bay of a chunky, thick man, shadow swallowing Naomi whole, reeled a stout body that last half-centimeter she needed to plummet.

 _WHUMP!_

Her head would have suffered did that boy not reach out and catch her. Squinting at what must've been a bright-colored, stout body, he sighed softly. Naomi's cheeks flared. She felt like some crazy kindergarten drawing via her primary coloring and squirmed. "I saw enough to save your life. Don't take so much gratitude out of the gesture.

Blue fronds of hair whipped to the side as he murmured, "I would have done it in any way. You don't need to test me, Naomi." A retort wormed its way up her throat and bit into her tongue, but she bit back hard and ignored blood's arid taste. Maybe they were even, now that he'd saved her. Cocking a head curiously, her shorter lines of bole hair framed the curiosity. Shige-nii didn't look back. Face cast in shadow, it caused him an even more ghastly look. Of course, ghosts were cyan—or vermillion—as they understood now. In the lighting and missing his trademark lenses, her dear friend permeated with the feeling of unease, like she didn't belong here. As his head peered back her way, the momentum was lost, but the chill remained.

This place did things to people. She shook her head curtly, souring the notion. It stayed. Stubborn. Stubborn like her. Stubborn like damn Sachiko for putting the flea-bitten freaking rope in her hands every single time, for letting the darkening trap her as she was its wild animal to play with at the beginning of the game, and they had a stage to run, and with that noose and without her control she would hang her favorite person in the entire world on a filthy stall in a scum-washed restroom smelling of urine.

Not exactly the death she wanted to give Seiko. If she had to kill her. Grunting softly, Naomi patted at the funky cushion digging into her thighs and lost the little amount of breath she had covering the bottom of her lungs.

A rasp: "Wh-what _is_ it?"

"I don't know," he calmly responded, shrugging his shrouded-black long-sleeves. Pinching his nose. Naomi winced again. Her fingers clutched and pinched at the doughy pulp she sat on. Cold: more ice than dough. Her nails scrabbled at the hoarse, unforgiving texture refusing to bend beneath the combined weight of two pubescent teens. "Naomi, what's wrong?"

The chills burned in her spine. There that theater boy went, reading people like his books... so easily digging into their skin, sifting and scenting their feelings, and mentioning softly in some way that he cared. Didn't reach for her; didn't appreciate touching unless it came from a specific someone. But the words came. They always did. He could always tell.

"I..." Her gently-rough tone, scented in honey, rustled. "I'm..."

"Ill," he finished softly, "and we'll be okay, Naomi."

"I... ahhh..." Because she had nothing better to say, her teeth gritted, face bunched as she stared at the coarse, doughy seat, and mumbled, " _I know._ " And if he didn't have that Shige-nii lens of his to shift through her emotions and so easily figure out the problem and proffer a solution of sorts, he's brush her off and assume it wasn't working. But of course, he was Shige-nii, of whom didn't quite work like that. Scratching at a stray peeling piece of whatever they sat on, she asked him what the hell he thought it might attach to. What sort of dough peeled off like this? Why so much?

"I have come to the conclusion that it's a dinosaur." His voice, gentle but abrupt, calm, strong; did it have any laughter it would have erupted some salty hysteria on Naomi's part. Grumbling under a sharp cavern of teeth, she responded: "A dinosaur. A dinosaur."

In his usual, tidy remark, he repeated just what Naomi's mouth had spat out. Staring bleakly into their shared darkness outside, he went, "A dinosaur." Then, "Yes."

"How?"

"I don't know, but the coppery scales and insurmountable length give off enough, wouldn't you say?" Shige-nii, for the majority of his life, wasn't mean. He had wiggle room betwixt his words to offer some other ways this could be, but the girl beside him, stiff and taut with a new kind of worry she'd only first met in the rims of this beckoning nexus, had nothing but a dried tongue.

Just as worried as her voice provided, sounding stressed and complex and overemotional and, yes, worried, that stick, special worry clawing up her bones and marring her in little chips that she'd slip over, Naomi muttered, "A dinosaur." Her friend must've gotten the idea that she had nothing left to provide on this matter, so his head turned first cautiously, then directly downward facing, bangs shrouding him and causing more shadow. The reason for this continuous shade became obvious when her own slippery orbs fell and dropped unto the roiling fogs below.

"Th-the... hell..? H-how do we even get down from here!" Red sting painted her cheeks.

Because he did not know, he did not answer, only offered his presence and unswerving loyalty for her to hold onto, which she couldn't even hug because the damn boy despised touch. Unless it was her. Who wasn't Naomi. She supposed that made the taller teen almost similar to a dog, how he would be faithful and yearned affection—and yet a diplomatically picky dog who only chose painfully specific scraps to take. And apparently she was one of those scraps. No, not Mayu, but still welcomed into his circle. She feared questioning it might break their relationship, though she wasn't sure how that might work if their connection, so palpable, wasn't fragile.

Thinking of diplomatic and other words to the sort... "Hey, isn't diplodocus a dinosaur? Is this a diplodocus?" Hey, it was something.

"I don't know." Shige-nii wasn't going to lie about something like this.

 _Diplo-what now? What the freakin' heck is a diplo? Okay, I get it, you guys are lost idiots who think Pippy's some sorta cushion for your butts to rest on. Well, lay off, man! Would you like to be sat on via the butt of a water krona? Huh? HUH?_

Their heads snapped up simultaneously in the breadth of an eerie _crack_. "Did you hear that?" Naomi spoke faster. Her lips burned at the wording.

 _Well, duh, of course y—_

"Yes, I heard it." At least she wasn't the only one. Forcing rigid motions into calm gestures, Naomi's plump body creaked and fell to the left and saw that a wisp had some sort of white, slippery surface sticking out of Shige-nii's chest. His head, pointed downward again, stared calmly with the tip of his noise erected straight into the watery fin of the creature. This appendage in question stretched out long and flickered like a cut-off tongue—something each understood all too well—and the body behind it rose for some near ten feet.

 _Oh, I get it. You think this is how big I'm supposed to be—well, psyche, Imma sixtysomethinglong ghost last I checked but I needed to shrink because how else would I fit on Pippy's back comfortably?_ The more the teens had to adjust to this voice, the more detailed it began to sound. Gruff, but obviously female, and a bite zinged it too. Zinged it hot. Naomi's ears stung just from hearing this thing talk, and as her jaw worked, she could detect rows of tiny, pointy mountains of teeth inside. _Oh. Right._ Another fin materialized out of nowhere and stuck through their tall seat's back. _That's Pippy. A seismo, not a diplo._

Shige-nii hesitantly murmured—not aloud, Naomi squeaked, but in his head!— _Would that be seismosaurus?_

 _I dunno,_ smirked the water thing. It had a vaguely impressive snout that scared the living daylights out of the brunette just staring, her mind practically crying out for Seiko. _It's just Pippy the seismo, geez. Oh—oh. And—and I'm Droplet. Howdy-doo. If you couldn't tell already—_

"You're dead!" squeaked Naomi, "we know!" Her body had gone more than a little rigid and locked atop their mountain of a Pippy. Or... o-or whatever this thing was...

 _Geez, you could just talk in your head, you know._ Droplet smirked again, her lip curving over those sharp pincers while a playfully dour look radiated from her cyan presence. Naomi began to count and her face paled with each sighting, totaling in six fins. This thing, who threatened to be some half the size of what thing they sat on, already was in reign of six fins. And a long, thick, fish-like tail. She said she had no idea what the "turd" a freaking fish was, but that "Jkonna" said she heard someone call her it too. _Welp, anyways..._

It was like they'd never met before, and Droplet morphed into a new perso—krona.

Traces of the smirk remained, but most easily pancaked over and pointed down like Shige-nii's incredulous head, tainted by the sense of loss. _Pippy is dead, too._ Because that explained everything. _I didn't want him to die. I wanted him to live. But Jkonna and I saw his corpse, so he's dead, just like us. I don't really know what killed her and me, but Pippy's gone too, and I wanted him to live. I didn't want him to save me, like Jkonna did with Dino, because I don't need anyone to save me. I died, and no one was gonna save me. But I wanted Pippy to live._

If she listened through the infrastructure, sticky words tugged in Naomi's chest and ached, and she didn't understand why until she remembered her heart. _This place is a sad place... Yes, yes it is. I'm sure you all know by now what the heck you're doing, because Jkonna said she met one of you, and that you, all nine of you, know very well what you're doing, and you'll make it all end, so you know it's sad here, too. It's not even a sad_ place _: it's just... it's_ sad _here. It's sad. This is all very sad. And... wrong... and irrational—a very wrong end, yes. And the way the dead bodies look like they're celebrating, and all of the ghosts are messed up..._

 _It's almost... like it's a corpse party... y'know... A sadistic home for all this sadness, yeah._

Breathless, the duo cocked their heads and stared through the ghost, and what might have been in her was she still flesh and bone. How big a brain did she have? How much of a stomach? Or—her heart..? How much emotion rolled up in her veins with the seawater she looked to be redeeming of?

A sigh spilled out in a rush of a tidal wave, and the choke of tears was thick in it. Ghosts could cry... Naomi knew this... Oh how she was aware of this. Shige-nii as well. Their eyes met and broke past the pupil, past the iris, and into a bond that they had shared for a long time, and, she felt, would share forever.

 _If you scramble your dumb bums to the left, you'll find his tail stiffened in the perfect slide down._ She had never heard childish playground equipment mentioned in such a dull, cracked tone. It made Naomi want to hug her. Want to hug a water monster. Surprisingly, she didn't flinch at the idea. _Just... get out of here and solve your freakin' problem already..._

The duo made quick work scrambling and crawling, inching down the line of this Pippy character—corpse, indeed—and pushing down from the tail and landing on a foot bent at a chair-like angle to cushion the fall. Neither wished to see the similar salty liquid flowing freely in ways they had seen before.

A rattling sensation passed through them as their feet patterned on what had morphed into musty dirt emanating the faintest scent of pungent rot, like it had a purpose, and the cave-like basins, walled in crackly planks that peeled off their hinges excitedly as if to pounce upon a sightless or terrified victim—blue or brown haired, stake your claim. Wind whistled, and whistled, and veered off its course as the two broke into the current, surprisingly quick for their stature, although teenagers were known to pack canteens of pubescent adrenaline, and zip unto panels of rows decked by nothing more ornamental than gaping, rotting, tongueless craniums missing the rest of their fellow appendages.

Jumbled depths of darkness pooling in pockets of cloak on most undisturbed sides shivered and shook under the trepidation that someone nobody wanted to see perched there, like they sat on the doorway of a whole new world nobody else knew of, and the shattering, crackling chains of lightning still splintering off the sky somewhere high above garnered enough that it may so be true. Links of duets of humans charged at their own varying speeds in the demeanor that they could meet eventually. Dense uplifts of wind and outcroppings of entrances suggested that another earthquake had begun, and the thicker it creeped, the more time chimed in heads and recommended they moved faster.

It all started with the first meeting, which occurred in the brunt form of a carefully-styled and -bobbed head of autumn dark hair bouncing skulls by the chest of a layered figure who coughed hoarsely, angrily, upon impact. A large, pale hand shot out and jabbed at the intruder, hooking about a pale chin and forcing forestry green orbs into his sharp gaze.

"Holy hell!" In the flurry of his throaty accent he lost the chin and rounded back. He might as well have shared glances with a witch. "MAYU! YOU'RE NOT GODDAMNED DEAD!"

She squealed happily and twirled as her pleated skirt caught wind and spun like a slice of atmosphere. "I knowww! Isn't it awesome? I'm still aliiiiiive!" Cheerful yellow cotton bunched as her figure tightened and she mumbled something, gesturing at Yoshiki's taller face. His miniature mountains of blonde hair fell back as he turned.

Blue hair sticking up in what could've been static had her face not blushed thick cords of color, Ayumi softly retorted: "And _what_ do you _think_ you're doing with _your foot_ on _mine?_ " Pale lips pouted and forehead bunched up: all of it. Hell, the boy'd damn messed up. In a sort of effort to mop up the thundercloud, he jumped back and innocently raised paws of hands, muttering his apologies. If spiritualists had laser eyes he'd be goddamned dead right now.

By the true power of a magic wipe, her face blanked and a whisper fell from her puckered lips. "Euhh, Ayumi? Might wanna speak up there..." Worry crossed shady lines on the near-delinquent-looking boy's features, but he'd rather mention it than not. Ayumi was so damn blunt she wouldn't notice things otherwise. Hell... she needed Shige-nii's glasses. Speaking of the stiff theater boy, where was the guy? His arm always had a Mayu clinging tightly to it. Well... back when they each stood more than a Sachiko chance of being together. Geez.

"Mayu...?" Oh. Finally. She noticed. Yoshiki nodded approvingly at his slow-ass girlfriend, offering a blindingly trenchant grin forked in her direction, the other dark eye holding a heavy watch on the arrived brunette for fear she'd dart off and kill herself somewhere did he not. "A-and... Seeiiko... S-Seeikooo!"

"The hell?" Because he trusted his girlfriend to keep herself alive without himself watching about five seconds' time more than he did Mayu, the mostly-black-donned teen turned hell and caught a stout, pale hand right to the cheek, a burn encroaching but a mad blush furthering the indention. Wild, coffee-brown orbs bunched up at him and scrutinized.

"Whoaaa... what the heeeeelll?" Lips puckered; brown curls tossed themselves forward. "Yooshiiiiikii? Ya got a giiirlfrieend?" The sheer impossibility of the moment sunk in. "HOLY HELL! YOSHIKI'S GOT A GIRLFRIEND? AND IT'S AYUMI? OH—MY—GOODDDDDDD!"

"GET THE GODDAMNED HELL OUT OF HERE, SEIKO! OF COURSE I DO!"

"OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODDDDD! I NEVER THOUGHT THIS DAY WOULD COOOMEEEE!"

Giggling serenely to the side like the nice little girl she was, Mayu's lusciously leafy orbs fluctuated betwixt the space Seiko and Yoshiki occupied, her pupils digging awkwardly at the stab rounded manicures had taken upon a sloped chin.

Damn. If only every girl was Mayu.

Then one wouldn't be half mystified, half volcanic while the other dug her nails into his _goddamned chin_ and squealed. Then again, Shige-nii probably couldn't handle that many girlfriends. Or that many Mayus, for that matter. One blew him away enough as it was.

Yoshiki had such an overflowing gratitude that the three females circling him hadn't died that he couldn't even try to name it without uttering a string of curse words and calling it poetic romance while Ayumi scuffed his foot in her freakish way of revenge. Did she have to? Did she really have to? The splitting rip in his toe, stamped on by throbbing marks, told him enough, but did she really have to?

Suddenly overcome by the amount of emotion coursing through him, long arms semi-shrouded in ripped, black-and-white-and-red sleeves enveloped the trio and he almost cried from both the sheer pleasure and the sheer pain two of them had conducted. Quickly, he raised a hand to swat away the nails stubbed into his chin and ensued with the warmth enveloping his lucky-ass self. Already. Right here. Four goddamned people out of nine. And two of them always died.

Two of them always fucking died. He said it. He _goddamn said it._

This place did things to people. Wonderful things.

Blinded by the joy in his brightly shining watery orbs, the blonde hadn't noticed how his female friends spent one full minute attempting to react to whatever had overcome him until sharing a meaningful glimpse and wrapping their arms tight about the boy as angel whispers of tears flicked off of his cheeks and kissed their heads in little, salty _plips._

"Big brother?"

"Yuka?"

"Why are we waiting here?"

Dust scuffled beneath agitated toes that flickered impatiently in some sort of dance. Satoshi's wrecked figure and disheveled, softly-brown-haired head turned and smiled gently toward the girl squeezing his hand tightly, maybe a little fearfully. "Don't be scared, Yuka," came his warm, cracked rasp, "don't be scared... I wanted to see if someone would help us find our way through."

Somewhat idiotically, the siblings stood in their pungent, smashed, scattered silhouettes and peered through the rows of crusted, crooked wood sticking awkwardly out of the ground. He had no intention to count the pedestals and maneuver to the very edge of the shrine-like estate, as they all knew the single right way to cross without gaining a headache via tumbling into a stairwell. A specific maneuver. Straight delve into the rows of wooden stands like enlarged cemetery stones of wood; right, right, riiight until the very edge, don't leave the matrix; straight up—then right then—up, then the pointless loop which could be bypassed by a short cut left, then down, approaching the end of the matrix but not quite, a single step left and then up, and up, and away. Out. Done.

If such a bloodcurdling path recognized just how many gasps of air this same two people had taken on this single route alone, when the omnipresent portions of their separate times added all in one, it showed no markings of it. Satoshi's dark orbs squinted; Yuka's light glistened in the stretching of her eyes. They each understood the importance of not screwing up the pathway if they wanted to escape alive, which happened next. If they made it that far with their flesh on their bodies.

"It's okay, Yuka." Like worn, shapeless clay, his voice took another gentle form. Some attempt to cup her childish heart and hold it close. "I wanted to wait for the others and see if they'd show up. Soon, I hope..." As well, the vague interpretation that Jkonna the ghost might just show up to lead them the correct way through the nigh-skeletal markings, because a ghost always did that, it was ritual: he couldn't help it. God, he thought that sudden character, from first impression alone, set a spark into the dark abyss of hallways that had become a labyrinth through his overcomplicated heart, and it was cool. She was cool. And she was dead, unfortunately.

Dawning blue orbs inked in color and darted up to the eyes waiting down for her. Yuka's lips perched to say something about someone she would rather like waiting for, too, but the words got all messy and tangled and she didn't know how to tell big brother that she'd made friends unto dinosaur-like creatures that spoke in her head and had sacrificed their own flesh-and-bone bodies for her. Would he tousle her hair and ignore it? Well... they'd been at this messed up weirdo place a long time... maybe, by now, he would listen to her.

Ironic: the little sister held a secret of his close possibly relating to how frightening the rumors or stories he found discarded in the hallways back at school and how much he took to his once-simple heart, and how much he'd believe and foresee nightmares of for weeks on end. And yet when her tiny figure meant to delicately pop his fragile bubble and remind him of a terror, _she_ got brushed off. Humph. I love you, big brother, she grumbled to herself, but why don't you try... a-acting like Yuka's opinion matters!

Of course she didn't really care as long as her doll-like, pale hand deserved to be struck with his. So ignore Yuka if he had to.

Satoshi softly murmured tepid words that spoke of fiery redheads whose eyes were like hers, his head tossed back, then, and staring curiously at the dribbling blue snout just about ready to poke his face out.

Excitedly, the little girl's hand slapped at her headband and, feeling its gooey, plastic warmth safely crowned, tried to whisper using Torn's old trick. _Hello, there!_

 _HOLY TURD YOU UNDERSTAND MY DEAD WAYS! PRAISE THIS CHILD!_ Whomever it was, her approach apparently helped matters.

"Aaa-aa... Yuka..?" One single orb rolled back to prod at her. "Wh-what are you... doing..?"

 _Talking to Torn's friend, big brother!_

"Torn's... friend..." His lips ran over the words, eyes alight under the spell of a freaky, sparkly pendulum inside of him.

Then suddenly in a wave of cyan, the blue snout was gone and a fanned face propped itself, pointing a forked tongue over to the little girl. _Holy shit. HOLY SHIT. YOU FOUND YOUR FUCKING BROTHER! IT'S A DAMN MIRACLE!_ Tears Yuka's glacier orbs didn't know they contained gathered under her chin and petaled softly in feathering swirls to musty soil below.

A flash suggested that the finned spirit felt like she deserved to hang around the little girl and the big brother more than Torn did, but his forked tongue split and he hissed back some naughty words, and like that: empty space took a hold of his gleaming figure. _Holy hell, I dunno who that is but they are one pissed bitch. I think she's secretly happy I got her outta the way. DAMMIT, I WANNA FUCKIN' DO THIS! TRIKKO GOT TO TRY AND SUBDUE THE BIG FATASS MAN THAT ATTACKED US! LEMME AT LEAST, DAMMIT, DO THIS!_ Not even a bubble suppressed his ghastly figure. The water vivosaur that wasn't Trikko left his slate nice and clean.

Satoshi, at an utter loss for words, watched limpid and stringed, like something had yanked out his tongue or he'd become a shivering tree who couldn't speak. Torn's sizzling voice sprung out and a clawed paw idly fingered at his cheeks. _Wow. He's so... alive. Damn, I should say I miss being alive but I learned that both fucking Rupert and Dina died too, aaaas did Trikko, that lovely bastard, as did Pauleen who I had no fucking sliver of an idea that she was here, and so did some other bitches I didn't even know until now. Like that girl. Droplet. I think her name is Droplet. Well, she's pissed, so don't mess with her._

Even as the scaled dimetro's voice grew hotter, louder, Satoshi didn't stir and stared all the more blankly toward him. Mumbled something about a Jkonna, quoted her. Yuka's turned head peered in creased worry for him, but Torn shrugged his willowy shoulders. _Whatever the fuck's with him. I'm supposed to show off some trick thingy to get you the hell outta this shitty line but I don't feel like it. Also, I think you already know tha—_

 _Torn?_

 _Uhhhh..._ Once-yellow orbs, gleaming somehow, even in death, blinked once. _Yuka?_

 _C-can Torn still feel his wounds..?_

Another willowy shrug. His tongue glided over teeth that had nothing stuck on them, as he couldn't hold anything on him in his state. _Sorta. Sometimes. Mostly if I don't think about them and just think about Trikko or something, I don't. But yeah, they're still there. Sort of. Not really. I'm not one of the bitches who succumbs to crap that ended. I'll keep blaming Rupert for the faults of the world and keep on truckin', thank-ya-veeerry-fucking-much. Because I don't succumb. I blame Rupert. I'll probably stick around until I stop blaming him, which, see, won't ever happen. So I think my immortal soul is literally fucking immortal as in_ saaaaane. _See?_ His toothy grin struck as if to prove it.

Her big brother had dimmed in comparison to little sister and dimetro: eyes awkward and dinky and dull beneath a fluffy mass of shadowed tawny hair. Absolutely speechless to the sight of this speaking and freely-sticking-out-its-tongue creature the size of a llama, maybe a little shorter, and gloating to be actually forty-some-feet long. Not to mention its ethereal substance. As it wasn't living any longer, its flesh disposed into some earthy floor like a rag of a cushion. Hints of color suggested the corpse itself had been red, as the endless sea of scales would have been, perhaps, without the gouging marks riding down his sailed spine. Because he didn't know what else to do, a pale hand rose and stiffly shifted from side to side in some kinda wave, tiny arms tightening about him and a high-pitched voice squeaking to the fact that he's moved.

 _Seriously. You act like Dina and Rupert and it's fucking sickening because I hate Rupert. I don't hate you and I bet I don't hate this guy who's with you but really, I don't like Rupert. As in at all. As in si-cken-ing. Damn, that felt good to sound out. I should do it more often._

Because it was one of the least sterile things he could unconsciously perform in the presence of this cuss-hacking _thing_ , Satoshi slowly raised a sleeveless elbow and, the skin pillowing his face, sneezed. An unfortunate glob of mucus ran under the crook and another load of it stuck up his nose and forced him to either miserably dribble or breathe with that creepy effect through his lips. He sighed.

Long day. Night. Whatever.

They all were.

His adorable younger sibling pinked at the cheeks and bent over, tore off a swatch of fabric with a satisfying _rrrrrrip_ and handed a cobalt bit of fringed cloth toward his towering figure—well, towering in comparison to little Yuka. A hand cupped the bit of her he held in his hand as long fingers crinkled about soggy fabric and wiped, kind of smeared, then wiped off, dabbing away snot and allowing the rest of the shaggy piece to pillow his nose and excrete more green slime from himself. How embarrassing.

It was then, of course, of all available timing, that a second body unceremoniously crashed and set off against him, causing both boys as well as the unruly, balled-up snot rag, to plummet.

Guess where all of the mucus ended up.

On a Shige-nii's forehead. With this _crinkle-crinkle: PLURP._ And then it all went to hell. Gooey, frustrating, lukewarm, slimy hell.

Somewhere on the other side of a tunnel he couldn't escape, a strong and thick body enveloped one of smaller and drearier proportions, mopping up their multiple wounds and cloth mutilations as one being, the female cooing to the shorter one she so happily hugged into her figure. Satoshi smirked at the thought of how he had once loved that figure. No. The heart and soul melded within that figure. But that he had been wrong; but that he had... someone else to be there by his side. And if he only knew to search for a girl shorter than five feet tall who always tugged at him and held onto him, he would have realized it a hell of a lot sooner. Sometimes it almost seemed for the best they had all gotten shoved into this foul school on their own.

Almost, almost, geez.

But it had revealed to him under closed curtains what a lovely group of individuals he had. Truly _had_ alongside him. Perhaps he still loved Naomi, only in another way. Another dimension of the single word—another space, if one wanted to use a reference to the hole he was forced to live in for all this time. But who would rather do that?

"Satoshi..."

"Aahh... s-sorry, Shige-niiii!" Already: face bright, pulpy, redder than Sachiko's dress.

"Pff..." It came out more a sigh than a laugh; more a wheeze than a grin. But it happened anyways, and it looked like the glasses-donned bluenette wouldn't kill him today. Okay, there was that one time he had been right there and Shige-nii realized freaking Mayu had gone and died again, that _one time_ , when he went crazy and murdered his brunette buddy. _Once. Okay. Once._ Just once.

"It's fine, Satoshi... I'll live with it. Although, I must admit, I'm surprised..." Raising one large hand to scrape past the goo and give the most bizarre glance, Shige-nii's cool, forestry orbs blinked luminously toward the boy still splattered on the dirt over by his shame. Why did he look so—

Oh. His glasses. He didn't have his glasses. What had happened to his glasses?

"How are both you and Yuka still in one piece and together? And why is she staring so intently toward the red one? I believe Mayu mentioned something about it prior..." Those eyes that were so used to being covered up by a glassy glare showed off melted bits and pieces of warm emotions hidden beneath the cluster of shadowy, natural greenery inside. Wait— _wait._ May—did he say Mayu? As in the girl he loved and apparently found alive and _holy hell he hadn't gone insane about losing Mayu._

It all came out in one knotted hodgepodge. "I can't believe you're still alive! Oh my God! What happened? Why aren't you upset and dead? Why are you talking about Mayu as if she hadn't died agai—is she still _alive? OhmyGod, is she still alive?_ Ohhhhhh... my God... where's Mayu? I haven't seen her in so long! And where are your glasses?" Chipper and frantic at the same time, Satoshi's face crumpled as the black-donned figure gently took his shoulders and assisted him in standing.

"Slow down, Satoshi. You'll run out of energy, and I doubt I would approve to being responsible of carrying you." Millions of times brighter, his eyes gleamed. "Although I wouldn't mind so much if it was Yoshiki. Where is he, anyways..?" Gently turning round, his deep blue fronds of hair spun with him, but no tan-and-blonde combination summoned itself, or any sort of other figure they should have recognized.

Mostly because the boy nearly smothered whom came next. Squealing, the tiny girl, bits of shining har pieces spiraling in caramel hair, squeezed the boy into a thorough hug, and he held her back tightly. Emerald orbs blinked about and shone almost dramatically. "Shige-nii..." she murmured, "Shige-nii..." He whispered something too soft and gentle for Satoshi's ears.

Behind—

"Oyy! Mayu, don't run that goddamned fast! WHAT IF GODDAMNED YOSHIKAZU COMES OUT OF—oh, that's just Shig. Whatever, then." Smirking past his near-spikes of pale blonde hair, Yoshiki raised his dark orbs and strangely cut figure, waving a sunny hand toward whomever he approached. "Satoshiii! Oh my God, I can't believe what the hell I'm seeing! Seiko; Ayumi: when does he turn into that little goddamned red-wearing bitch?"

A giggle from someone shrouded from his already-pockmarked view as his head swiveled in the dark. Not mentioning how many people stood around the what seemed to be a destined meeting-place. "I dunnooooo... Satoshi suuure looks like a little girl with hip-length long hair, doooon't heee?"

"Oh my God, it really is him! That's ama—"

"Stop sounding so happy about seeing my best friend or I will die, Ayumi _. Just. Goddamned. Stop._ "

"Geez, why the hell are you so jealous?"

"I don't know, not like you had an outrageous crush on that bastard for years! Maybe even a decade! I dunno, _why would I?_ "

"Ugh, you're so annoying sometimes!"

Seiko's delighted _squeeeeee_ tore apart their squabbling. Shining brown orbs permeated the darkness and penetrated its core that must have been of darkening itself, waggling her fingers freely as she skipped. Her skirt pulled unto each step and her shoes clattered harmoniously. The two following beside her stepped with a _shhhlump_ that suggested socks, no slippers. "You're sooo cuuuuuuutee! Uuuuuuuughhhhh, I shiip it soooo haaaaarrrrd! But not as hard as me and Naooomiiiiii~" Her skip turned into a gallop and girl attacked girl, tiny Yuka sliding and thumping on hard-packed, well-used dirt against the brunette who had returned to sitting as peacefully as he could with his heart racing this much.

"SEIKO! I TOLD YOU NOT TO TOUCH MY ASS! GET OFF!"

"Ooohhhh, but how can I resiiiist, Naaooomiiiii?"

"STOPPIT, SEIKO!" Slapping a stinging blow and turning a frown over to her, tears sprouted from a dry faucet and the same fingers that marked red on the other's cheek curled comfortingly around the less-stout girl, from her tips of her toes to her frame of quivering, dark hairs brimming under the upheaval of emotion. "Seiko..."

The girl buffeted by such feelings crooked open her mouth as if to fire some dumb joke about the warmth her girlfriend gave off, but in the end lips seamed shut and her own shaky hands raveled about the other, head cradling against shoulder and the salty tips of her own teary eyes creeping upon them. Yuka, excited at all of these feelings being tossed around, bounced a little in place and pushed her hand underneath Satoshi's larger hold. Her cheeks flushed and pinched under the full control of color and the heart. The dimetro guy had, at some point, sputtered out, which Satoshi recognized as his head crooked back and saw that that oversized lizard had winked from existence.

To which he wondered: had he stalled their duo on purpose, as to allow the others to conform? Or was it an unintentional bliss? Whatever the matter, a head count revealed a total of eight in his presence, and his heart warmed. Yui and the other adult by her side had promised to show up later in possession of the hemp bag and the cat plush, so...

what would happen... now that all of his dearest ones had been... reunited? All nine had never lived to see the end... not at once... Gently shaking his head, he felt that same creep of heart as all the others did, the incredulous, incredible, unmasked realization of the meaning of what _had_ happened. Framed by a box of soil and old, mismatched wood, he couldn't have felt any happier.

Somewhere just behind a blind side, just underneath the allowing glow of sight to alight upon, just before the others would recognize their ninth and final companion, a tenth comfortably took her pale fingers in his sun-kissed reddish and patted at his hat with the one hand gently cradling a bipedal plush, arms and legs held soundly to sleep with the kitten while its chest, not so much the usual black fur and soft, intact substance. It felt hardly ominous to hold a toy destined for another child: he'd done it prior multiple times. No big. The pard had had a sorta child. Dina, righ'. Dina.

In the other hand of the ninth, supposedly making him not simply a tenth but _the_ tenth, if he was feeling particularly special, sat a round and thoroughly squeezed bag of rough, gritty, root-like covering, its strings tied snug around the neck of her wrist and the majority of whatever the container touched doused in a faint sheen of red. Darker, pulpier than the tenth's skin.

Joe Wildwest took and fondled the hand he was given, the fingers of Yui Shishido. Warm and snug and held taut like the rest of her body, all working regularly except for the occasional cough of dark air, because now she had it, apparently said she got it _saving his damned life,_ whoop-de-doo, she stuck close to his side and to her amethyst high heels, having told him by now that they made her taller and feel closer to him. Which Joe honestly liked. Maybe he was just a sucker for cute, heartfelt things, but he liked it and he didn't kick off her shoes and carry her or something regal and sanitary like that. Naaah. Joe wasn't like that; before him, he wasn't like that either. Tsukasa Mikuni.

Somehow it had all worked out. He'd managed to save maybe a life or two or assist in some couple'a places with the kids of Yui, her own lively and lovely kid-friends, which even from here he could see and recognize and possibly name a few—always Yoshiki, that one just had value to him by now—and although he had not found any of the one person he _had_ been on the durn lookout for, something told him she had found peace by now. Made him wonder what the heck happened to Dino, wish he didn't get himself thumped on the head by the things that go bump in the night and lose the poor boy.

Feeling almost like royalty, helping that he had this brunette with her panda jewelry and her pink clothes and the shiny skirt, this Yui herself, beside him—and them regal eyes too—Joe calmly trotted over toward the messy congregation of eight teenagers gathered amongst a corridor full of funny old boards stickin' outta the floor. Like in a creepy ritual.

Upon the sighting of the two adults and confirming that everyone had shown up, each and every one of those kids, whether tall or short or they had brown hair or blonde hair or blue hair or they had their clothes intact or in dust or practically falling off—geez, Yoshiki, what in tarnation didja do to yerself after he saved ya—or they had a black or white jacket with dark pants or a cottony yellow long-sleeve and pleated, dark skirt: they all seemed to belong here, and they all had this warm homey feeling clinging to them. Made Joe feel less special. Like he wasn't number ten after all.

Then he cheerily reminded himself that those nine had never survived on their own, so therefore he had to be important. Plus, after calling him a _goddamned idiot_ and then thanking him for the help about letting him stay alive to save his girlfriend and keep them both in suited spirits, as well as everything they had been through, as well as poor ol' Pippy who had died not-in-vain by their beseemed side, Yoshiki appeared happy that the orange-haired guy had made it. The only one with orange ringlets and the, as they called it, though back in his... _new_ world, they didn't have them, "coww-booiys" and "moooooo." A certain female shyly stepped up to him, her little self glowing under hopefulness, a tall male glancing under the need of glasses beside her protectively, went and asked him if he was related to a girl named Dina.

He'd smiled, and said, "Why, doll, I rightly am," and it gave his heart a strange warmth to see her smile at that. At him having known Dina as well. She and the boy seemed to understand, without having to ask, to not permeate the topic any further. Thank them. Thank their souls.

As he harmlessly loped just behind the stampede, Yui's fingers wriggling warmly in his grip, he could've sworn he heard a familiar voice hiss into his ear:

 _You're still fucking alive and kicking._

He didn't bother trying to lasso that whole moving scenario into memory. Apparently all nine of them already had it unintentionally memorized by heart. Poor, tuckered souls. Here came the part where they were freed from their pain. Finally. Eternally. He had absolutely no idea what'd happen after that, but they'd be okay, and that would be nice. He wanted Yui and the others to be okay, now. They had gone through a lot.

In a weird way they'd never voice aloud and even less so would admit to, now that the endless bloody suffering had ended and the memories noticeably dulled, they'd prolly look back on this century-or-so of plentiful time they'd had together. And, bonus, they hadn't even freaking aged a bit. Some sliver recalled from his past life was how quickly people aged then. How they would jump out of their baby roots and soon fly off in a teenage ball of energy then be adult-y for awhile and then _bam_ gray hair and white hair, wrinkles, senile elderly stuff, and death. First off, it all moved slower'n Yoshiki in his life. _His life._ Simply his. And s' well, the whole wrinkles and elderly age biz never really happened... Shaking back the bits of a newer life that had peeled away for now, Joe remembered to squeeze his dear's hand as they strolled almost a little peacefully.

Past some corpse hanging on strings like a puppet—a couple lively ones jeered and hissed about Yohh-shhiii-kaaah-zuuu and how many times he'd killed so-and-so—the very depths of Joe's ears could catch onto the whisper of dead ones that had gone and appeased the guy to get it over with at some point so he'd stop showing up and being annoying. The ghost children had taken longer, and judging by their disdain, this whole _Yoshie Shinozaki_ business wasn't really something they wanted to talk about right now and remember, but it seemed by luck and unintentional help of the living, through and through, it was ready. Shivers arced up and down the school; an ethereal feeling had dripped, dripped into its depths and the darkening he had heard so much of seemed as far away as it could get.

Ten souls lined up about the rotted debris of what had once been a not-so-grotesque female child under the bloody mask of a red dress, her bed of straw and hard dirt. Her sunken head and dark, gunk-black orbs appeared lonely. It made Joe feel sad.

"Sachiko, we give you what is rightly yours: so please, take your tongue and speak again to your own free will, instead of beneath the corrupt power bestowed cruelly and wrongfully upon you." A tall male in blue fronds of hair spoke this, his black attire not scary but warming. Yui, the male observed, swung back a pink-donned arm and tossed in the hemp bag of hers, the welling of blood upon her skin all but smudged out of existence.

It didn't hit the ground but a shockingly cyan spirit popped out of nowhere and caught, then cradled, "what is rightfully hers."

"Sachiko—" The somewhat-stout female under creamy earth-colored curls stuttered—"W-we give you what is... rightfully yours. So—so please, take your kitty and love it to your own extent." Her voice grew stronger with each chant-like sentence. "And fill it instead—with joy! Not the merciless pain of your suffering and the suffering you have caused, but the love and joy you deserve, as well as the ones around you who love you as well." Oh boy. Oh boy. Joe's cue. He—

Suddenly bashful, his fingers released the black-furred toy and handled it to the tiny girl beside him who was with the boy who needed glasses, of whom cheerfully nodded her thanks and tossed it toward the female, who caught this with her free hand and cradled it all the same.

This tiny creature, almost an infant in size, well, practically, under the torn red dress flashing a creamy color and her tattered hair dissolving into a heavenly sheet of midnight-black, began to hum, and sing, softly, words that were just out of his wisdom to understand and take in. The others seemed a little startled by this showing and watched as this cool, calm, serene splash of life adorned the labeled Sachiko's body and she, herself, sunk into a warm halo of light and almost, just about dispersed.

Out of nowhere, a hinged door _creeaaaaaked_ open and, as pooled light, so did the silhouette of a gray-colored boy. He delightfully took up a spot in the circle and bounced on the balls of his toes with the look of having come far. Still, a shadow creased him when he thought no one was looking, and he seemed winded on some sort of spiritual level.

Strongly, lifting her face into a gale force of wind that sprung upon them, lifting the corpse, lifting their feet, lifting the ghosts—whoa, so many ghosts, creepy—that had tailed them as well as a big, heavyset man and a thin lady who both seemed dead on varying levels, this female shouted into the presence of whatever almighty thing had descended upon them, her blue curls of hair flipping:

"Sachiko, we beg of you!"

After her followed the blonde boy himself.

"Sachiko, we beg of you!"

Getting all giddy and confused, Dino squealed—

"Sachiko, we beg of you!"

A silent sigh of relief covered the wind that nobody mentioned. The boy hadn't flubbed it. At all. Thank God, some one or two whispered.

More voices followed. First the stout brunette, then the lesser one with the curls.

"Sachiko, we beg of you!"

"Sa-chiko, we beg of y-you!"

That little Yuka one chimed in.

"Sachiko, we beg of you!"

After quickly shouted the one in the crisp, white shirt with half-cut pants and sleeves who clung to her tightly.

"Sachiko, we beg of you!"

Then the tiny one with a warm outlook, and the one in the dark who felt happy.

"Sachiko, we beg of you!"

"Sachiko, we beg of you!"

Until a heave beckoned, and Joe quickly spluttered—

"Sachiko, we beg—er ya!"

Well. Seemed to work alright. Yui's smile warmed him as she finished:

"Sachiko, we beg of you!"

Then the bluenette girl added,

"Sachiko, we beg of you!"

And, under the umbrella of a final heave descending upon them, knocking all eleven down alongside their twelve phrases—he durn hoped they hadn't just messed it up—they fell into the arms of ghosts who propelled them onward, and he saw that some of the dangerous-looking ones from before, like the kid without a head—she now had one and pertained to a cute, front-teeth-missing smile—had gone puerile and acted like actual, cute, kind children. Wow. Nice.

Because each splintered off in that same specific pattern, Joe didn't bother to remember it still but flung on with the others who had oh so finally made it, he could feel it under the thundering of his heart, Dino following and somehow keeping up purdy well too, seeming to feel satisfied beneath their situation, they all took the loop and the curve and whatever in tarnation else it was, and they stampeded down and down a long hallway and made some twisty curved, avoiding _most_ narrow walkways but not _all,_ and then down a long lane of creepy, dissolving—into light particles—heads and benches, to which a left, left, right, left, left or something like that was determined, and out they flung into paper-adorned doors Joe honest-to-heck didn't remember and down a long, narrow hall and past shaking, flinging floorboards and into the arms of that covered walkway, where the rain had ended and instead a shedding of inky sunlight had emerged.

Under the new pretense of safety, everyone had finished jogging and stared upward, mouths upturned and eyes glowing incredulously. There were whispers about how something must've been done right because they hadn't seen the sun for over one hundred cobweb-dressing years.

That was a long time to be a vampire.

Joe smirked idly at his joke.

Clustered among the railed edges unto their freedom, where trees spilled out into a footless pathway of clean opening—new beginning, nine souls upended over the ends of their time here, sitting there, on the very last step toward something they never deemed possible to ever happen again.

Life. Joy. Hope. Or just nine people sitting on a fence. That simple.

They basked in their time, in this sudden unraveling of the knots that had tied up their hearts, of the fear-for-their-lives that had ended, and of this light that would lead them somewhere else, now that it was all over. Now that the curse, dare they whisper it, had been broken.

In fact, the nine of them, such an intriguing pair, did not shove off at different intervals but what felt like their souls exiting a black nexus—now white—in a stride of pure unison. Yui glanced back toward him once, and their gazes lingered, but she smiled and broke the look, and she left alongside the others, their strange little family.

That was all people wanted. To find those they could have and just hold close to them and call their family. It was nice to see their passing; of the girls in their torn or dusted or bloodied, cut up uniforms; the boys tall like trees and donning similar injuries altogether. Only a specific adult in her click-clacking high heels held no injury. He liked to believe he had protected her, somehow. But he remembered the cough; but she had stopped coughing now.

And then nine souls met sunrise and brightness, love and hope and peace, and melded into the light. To wherever they would be taken.

Joe could hear, in the background of his soul, the rusting and squeaking and dying of the nexus of closed spaces, now that it was over. Perhaps it would take some time for all of the sorrow to digest, but he felt particularly sure all of the souls would be released soon enough. He had no idea what was in store for himself, nothing at all.

"Hey, Joe."

And then the gray one piped up, his slate orbs peering under their new shadow at the adult.

"I'm tired. You tired?"

"Yessir." He nodded gently, his hat rumpling nicely about his head. "Purdy durn tired, if ah do say so meself."

There was silence. A comfortable silence, as they peered out into the horizon and sat upon the railing. Then;

"Didja know I was once some clown called Tsukasa Mikuni?"

"Wow, that sounds unfortunate, man." A pause. Some chortles. "Didja know my sister died trying to kill me? Because she liked some guy and he went and died? Craaazy world, dude. Turd's going on."

"Yeah..." Joe smiled softly, his gaze holding a small shadow as well. A memory, now. But still there. "Yeah..."

All had gone quiet once more. The railing they sat atop had adorned itself with a blinding whiteness instead of its old, rusted gunk that wasn't all that pleasing to sit on. In fact, the two wings, the pool, the abandoned bomb shelter, and all other appliances used, unused, or known, perhaps more than that, too, had become white and pretty, before they were sent to be scattered into the light of the dawn as well. Puffy clouds inked just on the edges, but they were pleasing too. Pleasing scenery.

"Hey Joe?"

"Yeah?"

"I don't think I'm going to find Jkonna..."

"Yeah..."

It was a sad recollection, all that blind young Dino had gone through, his innocent self scraping and scrabbling for any single way to save his dearest best friend. But then his sister came up—though Joe held a sneaking suspicion even if his sister hadn't came up, Dino never would have seen her again. All he had was the distant plaything of a memory, for when they had played tag together in the hallways of a curse.

He never knew it was a curse, did he.

Well, now he'd never have to know. It was free. Everything was free, now. And it was... nice, if nothing else.

Letting out a long, satisfying sigh, Joe and Dino silently watched the rest of the sunrise alight its peak.

 **Welp. It's over.  
I'm curious. Did any of you scarce and wonderful readers think that Joe or Dino were to die before they showed up at the end? Did any of you expect [insert character that died] to die? I'm so curious! X3 I... actually, always planned those two would live. It was always a bet on everyone else as I set up. You should have seen how hesitant I was with killing Rupert. That, honestly, was the very first thing I decided when I decided to write a corpse party story that both included my beloved fossil fighters (main) characters (although not all of them ;w;) and gave them their happy ending we were all waiting for, that we knew they would reach at the end.**

 **My friends, the loop is over. They have made it.**

 **I don't even begin to know where, but they have found their light together, and they are happy now... and they're... all together now... TTwTT Makes me all teary-eyed and happy, too...**


End file.
